She is a 15 year old student, living in Mosul. I have written her and have her permission to post some of her blog entries here. I have edited the entries only to to make them more easily readable. It is all to easy to talk about "The Iraqis" as if they were a faceless nameless entity instead of very real people living their lives as best they can. I find this young girls writing compelling, and important because it puts a human face on "The Iraqis".
NOTE: I am not the Mr. Bennett she mentions in the blog, but I could have asked the same question and been impressed by her answer.
http://livesstrong.blogspot.com/I received a beautiful letter from my friend Mr. Bennett , a dear friend and a regular reader for me blog , he asked me to answer his question : How do you remain so "Sunny" in the face of such terrible things happening around you. I don't even have to live in Iraq and I feel a sense of hopelessness about everything. Every time it seems to get better, something bad happens, and while I too would like the US occupation to end and our troops to come home, I worry what will happen in Iraq if they live. How do you do it, Sunshine? You always have such a great outlook on life no matter what happens.
Well , I don’t remain "sunny" all the time believe me , I have times of desperation (or days of desperation!) specially when bad things happen one after the other, like when I hear 3 or 4 bad news everyday for few days continuously , like 3 weeks ago , my mom’s uncle was killed , my relative was kidnapped , the us soldiers took our friends , and the policemen took my friend’s dad (but he was released in he same day), those events happened in less than a week for people I know and care about , that made me very scared and depressed ,beside the stories I heard about killing two families ( the terrorists killed a family and burned them, and killed another family , put them in a car full with explosives when the policemen came they exploded the car), those events made me so close to lose my mind , I felt like I was living in a horror movie !! but I felt better and returned “Sunny” after few days .
I can’t live with desperation, I like to laugh , joke ,I won’t allow the war to effect my daily life and routine , I try to be as positive as possible, for me and for people around me .
No matter what happen to me in my way to school (the delay , mines , explosions, etc) I open the door with a big smile on my face, that makes my mom happy as well as my family , no one like to see a sulky face..
I made my decision that I should accept the reality I live in a war zone and I can’t change that , I didn’t choose to live in a war zone, I am not responsible for what is happening , I can choose whether I live optimistic or not.
Sometimes people live in great areas , have wonderful life, and have almost everything , but they are not satisfied, in the same time people live in misery and still have hope , and do their best to have a good life, it’s all about decisions.
No matter what happen , I’ll do my best to live a normal life and won’t let the situation and the terrorists have a great effect on my life and education, The terrorists want us to be depressed and miserable , they want us to lose the hope which is a basic thing for the life to continue , if there is no hope , there is no life. I don’t want the terrorists to win and achieve their goal, I don’t think it is impossible to have a peaceful life “impossible is nothing”.
We don’t hear in the stories that the devil wins, right? We hear the virtuous always win , I believe it is the same thing in reality. It is a matter of time.
So I do my best to be optimistic, and try not to think and remember the bad thing that happened in the last 3 years , but I feel worry about my family, myself and everyone , and that makes me feel hopeless sometimes, but then I remember a beautiful say dad said it to me once to calm me down “ what is supposed to hit you , won’t miss you , and what missed you wasn’t suppose to hit you).
I have faith in god , I believe he will protect us, we’d never hurt anyone, and those difficulties that we face everyday, is to examine our patience and faith in god, god protected us in the last 4 years , I hope he will protect us in the next years too, your prayers for us make me feel at ease, we pray for Iraq many times during the day, our prayers will get heed one day.
When I feel upset ,I do the things I like , I listen to music ,I try to think about nice things , remember the good memories , read some of my comments and letters again, that make me encore the hope and feel much better..
Never Ever Give Up.
Sunshine ..
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