I had a limited amount of suffering.
OK, I was tortured and so on,
many people suffered far worse than me.
The Archbishop of Canterbury’s special envoy, Terry Waite,
hasn’t been seen for more than 24 hours.
Fears are growing that he may be held against his will in West Beirut.
Where he’s been trying to negotiate the release of more hostages.
I had nothing.
I never saw the sun, or the sky or felt the wind on my face.
That’s an extreme situation.
But from extreme situations
you can take something that is applicable to normal life.
Initially I was kept underground, in the cell, and then later on, bombed-out buildings.
I slept on the floor.
And had nothing.
And I just had to say,
“How am I going to utilise this time?”
“What am I going to do?”
I wrote a short poem about anger.
Because I was angry at times, and I had to learn how to master anger.
And the short poem reads…
What I was really saying is that
if I allow my understandable anger to get the better of me,
it’ll destroy me.
And it’s a natural human force, we all have it.
You can’t obliterate it totally.
But take that force and utilise it constructively.
I used to say to myself,
although you’re in restricted and limiting circumstances,
and you’ve no idea whether you’re going to be out tomorrow,
whether you’re going to be out in five years,
whether you’re going to die in this place, remember one thing…
Not tomorrow, not yesterday, now.
And in this moment, don’t be defeated.
There’s no reason to feel sorry for yourself.
After 1,763 days in chains,
it’s an overwhelming experience
to come back and receive your greetings.
I thought those years in captivity
were totally wasted.
At the time.
But looking back, they weren’t.
Because I was forced there to use my imagination.
I was forced… I wrote my first book in my head.
The brain is like a muscle.
You use it, or you lose it.
Today, it’s a great regret to me
that the arts, music, literature, poetry,
are seen as not being really necessary.
Because at times of life,
you need to have in your mind something that you can draw on.
Something that you can refer to.
Something that will fill out your life.
So many people are suffering from mental illness.
From strain, from stress,
from having so much
pressure forced on them.
And somehow we need, today more than ever,
this ability to be at peace with ourselves within.
I’m not sure whether ever one reaches a state of complete happiness.
It’s an elusive term really.
I suppose all I can strive for
is to have a greater degree of inner contentment.
Which is in fact part of the road towards happiness.
