WHEN I RECENTLY reread The Old Man and the Sea, I doffed my hat to Santiago again. The old fisherman’s resilience in the face of suffering and his refusal to give in to despair are legendary. Over two days, he battles alone with a giant marlin in the Gulf Stream, his hands bleeding. When he finally kills the fish, he finds fearsome sharks racing to devour it. All he has is a small knife and a broken oar to attack them. He knows it is an unequal fight, and that he may not be able to save his fish. But he fights to the finish — he never gives up.
To my mind, the takeaway from the story is the old man’s undefeated spirit, his not falling prey to hopelessness or despair. For, “despair is the worst thing that can happen to a human being”, according to the Vietnamese monk, Thich Nhat Hanh.
The first bombing
In his book, At Home in the World, Thay – as his disciples call him – has shared remarkable life stories from which he has drawn lessons. The stories are categorized in sections dealing with different phases of his life. One story, titled Never Give Up, appears in the section on the Vietnam War and somehow recalls the spunky Cuban fisherman.
The year is 1964. The Vietnam War is raging – the country’s communist north (backed, among others, by China and Soviet Russia) is fighting with the anti-communist south (backed, among others, by the US and South Korea). Thay is associated with the School of Youth for Social Service (SYSS) that trains youngsters in humanitarian work, including rebuilding bombed villages. One day, news breaks that the American forces have bombed Tra Loc, a village in Quang Tri Province that the group had rebuilt over a year.
More bombs fall
With the villagers having lost their homes, the SYSS team is instructed to rebuild Tra Loc a second time. For six months, the youngsters work with their noses to the grindstone. As the village slowly takes shape, the American forces bomb it again. The second time over.
The team is aghast. They ask their supervisors what they should do. After all, Tra Loc is very close to the demilitarized zone between the warring halves of Vietnam and always in the crosshairs. So, it could be bombed again. But if the village isn’t rebuilt, where will the people live? The SYSS team, therefore, gets down to rebuilding the village a third time.
Within months, Tra Loc is bombed again. The third time over.
Should we give up?
At this point, everyone is close to despair. Rebuilt three times and bombed three times! Isn’t it a bit much? What should the next step be? Wide-ranging talks are held amid numerous calls to drop the project. But wisdom prevails. The final decision is to rebuild the village a fourth time. Not to give up.
“We saw that we could not afford not to rebuild. If we gave up on Tra Loc village, we would be giving up on hope. If we gave up hope, we would be overwhelmed by despair,” writes the monk.
Nourish your hope
Thay confesses that he did not have much hope at that time and had to practise a lot of mindful breathing and come back to himself.
“… if I’d had no hope, it would have been devastating for these young people. I had to… nourish the little hope I had inside, so I could be a refuge for them. In difficult situations like these, we have to go home and restore ourselves, to re-establish our solidity, freedom, peace and calm, so we can go on,” he says.
Take action
Around this time, there is a lot of discussion on how much longer the war will drag on. It’s nine years since it began. Suddenly, a few youngsters approach the monk and ask him whether the war will end anytime soon. Thay has no such illusion. But he does not want to say as much and cause despair. So, he stays quiet and collects his thoughts.
Finally, he replies: “Dear friends, the Buddha said that everything is impermanent. The war has to end one day.”
Having kept hope alive, Thay says it is vital that everyone looks deep within every day to see what can be done to help a situation. “Taking action helps us not to drown in despair,” he concludes.