As we remember 9/11 tomorrow I offer this reflection from The Aeneid:
We first meet Aeneas in a shipwreck, when he is very much the personal man, wishing himself dead.
O terque quaterque beati,
quis ante ora patrum Troiae sub moenibus altis
contigit oppetere!““O three and four times blessed, those who happened to meet death beore the altars of their fathers under the high walls of Troy!”
Everyone is fessus–tired. The Trojans are tired. The ships are described as tired.
But when Aeneas and only seven of his 20 ships reach the shores of Libya, he must be strong and says (Fagles translation)” “My comrades, hardly strangers to pain before now, we have all weathered worse.”
And he delivers one of the most famous lines of The Aeneid:
forsan et haec olim meminisse iuvabit.“Perhaps one day it will be a joy even to remember these things.”
He has lost his wife, friends, and many relatives in the war. Does he believe what he says? He knows how to say it.
And doesn’t this remind us all of sadness and disasters we have overcome?
Mental illness has touched nearly everyone in some way. Often we don't know what to do or who to turn to. This link is to a documentary run on our local public television station. It was produced by a young woman who grew up with a dad suffering from mental illness. Please take twenty minutes and watch it. It really helped me get a look in to a world that many people deal with every day, including some of my students.