We are the origins of war

This one-minute monolog delivered by Katherine Hepburn in The Lion in Winter  says exactly how I feel today. I would spit out every word of this myself if anyone would listen.

Sometimes the actions of my family nearly kill me. I have been devastated over the past 9 days, the light completely knocked out of me by a family member’s anger. But this morning I got some Facebook messages from Palesa, my elder daughter, who I last saw on October 28, 2010. She lives near Johannesburg, and after I posted that blip, another blipper, HRH Cinderella, contacted Palesa and is now meeting occasionally with Palesa and managing the money I’m able to send to help out, some of it with the help of Sue’s family. Palesa is working in a pre-school program (creche, as it is called in South Africa). She is attending classes to earn a certificate in the work she does, and she has purchased a little prefab house, sort of like a railroad car, where she lives with her son Katleho in an informal settlement (some call them shanty towns) called Daveyton.

Occasionally Palesa buys data time for her cell phone and is able to contact me on Facebook, via Messaging. This morning she wrote, “ iam free and hppy and I love u with all my heart.” I wept for joy. Palesa has had struggles most of us cannot imagine, but she is the same fiercely loving person she was when I met her and saw the light in her in 1992. She too has been capable of rage and violence. But today, she’s free and hppy. 

“We are the origins of war. Not history’s forces nor the times, nor justice nor the lack of it, nor causes nor religions nor kinds of government nor any other thing. We are the killers. We breathe wars. We carry it like syphilis inside. Dead bodies rot in field and stream because the living ones are rotten. For the love of God, can’t we love one another just a little? That's how peace begins. We have so much to love each other for. We have such possibilities, my children. We could change the world.” --James Goldman, The Lion in Winter.