A cup of soup we could all learn from......

[Guest guest]

Hello to all: In light of the recent conversations about how we all deal with

how this condition affects each of our lives, I thought it was perfect timing

when I received this " cup of soup " . Hope you all enjoy it as well! Nery

The Qualities of Survival

Several years ago I found myself a long way from home

in a small prison cell. As a prisoner of war, I was

tortured, humiliated, starved and left to languish in

squalor for six years.

It's important that you get a vivid mental picture of

this scene. Try your best to smell the stench in the bucket

I called my toilet and taste the salt in the corners of my

mouth from my sweat, my tears and my blood. Feel the baking

tropical heat in a tin-roofed prison cell - not that you'll

ever be a POW. If I am effective in these few moments we

spend together, you'll see that the same kind of challenges

you face as a teenager, a student, a leader, or a parent,

are the same basic challenges I faced in a prison cell:

feelings of fear, loneliness, failure and a breakdown of

communication. More importantly, your response to those

challenges will be the same response I had to have in the

prison camp just to survive.

What qualities do you have within you that would allow

you to survive in a prison camp? Please pause here, think

about this question, and write in the margin of this page at

least five different qualities necessary for survival. (If

you've written faith, commitment or dedication, you've

already broken the code.)

As I worked my way through the first several months and

then years of imprisonment, I found I already had a

foundation of survival tools learned in life from my

parents, preachers, youth leaders, and teachers. And the

life-saving techniques I used in that prison camp had more

to do with my value system, integrity and religious faith

than anything I had learned from a textbook.

Sound like your life? The adversities you face in your

life can be just as debilitating to you as six years in a

Communist prison camp could have been to me. Now here's the

test: The next time you have a huge problem facing you, turn

back to this page and read not my writing but your writing

in the margin. You'll find that the same factors you've

written here, which would serve you well in a prison camp,

will serve you even better in the challenge of everyday

life.

By Charlie Plumb

from A Cup of Chicken Soup for the Soul

Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen & Barry

Spilchuk