Sois Courageux: Utter Despair

In the context of my "Hotel Rwanda" email to my faculty, she sent me an amazing reply.. Here you go:

"Dear Darshan,

... You can't imagine my alarm at reading this email subject heading today: interestingly I actually found myself glad to read this version of despair (as opposed to the one I had wrongly imagined).

My Dad is actually waiting in the car for me now, but I didn't want to leave without letting you know I got this email and how much I understand why you would feel so utterly forlorn. I have been there many times. Most human rights advocates and lawyers have (in fact I would say every last friend of mine has).

For me, the point of our being alive is to find a way to respond to the very real problems (much more horrifying than even Hotel Rwanda chooses to depict or than N&Z had the space to lay out) without giving up. There's a strong value in being an idealist rooted in reality. In my view any other kind of idealist or idealism won't last. You will never have the long term strength to fight for what you believe in if you don't confront--in varying doses--the barriers that lie before you.

Don't be thrown off by the "just pretty words" point. All ideas come in words, and all words can be as fleeting as the paper or emails in which they're written, but people give "the full measure of devotion" to make certain words reality.

Don't be thrown off by the enemies point. It's true generations of work can be destroyed "in a NY second." For me that means we have to be more savvy about our enemies and even more determined to outrun, outorganize, outwill them.

I know what I'm saying will strike you as more words. You will find the lifelong fire for such words in your own way. Trust that in your heart, mind and stomach, stories will reside to give you strength. If not stories, some other form of deeply rooted en-courage-ment.

Everything you believe in is at stake here: that's why I know you will hold both despair and courage close to your being.

My favorite French phrases is sois courageuse.

Sois courageux, my big-hearted and determined Darshan.
"

:)