The Spirit of a Refugee

The spirit of a refugee is something to be changed by. From enduring more pain and adversity than many of us will ever know, to uprooting their entire lives in order to seek refugee, to being slapped in the face by culture shock and more hardships, and finally, at the end of all of this, seeking to give more of yourself for the sake of others. The amount of pain and suffering refugees have endured is astonishing. Hron describes the official definition of pain in Suffering Matters, “pain is an unpleasant sensory or emotional experience associated with actual or potential tissue damage or described with such damage.” (pg. 36) He further explains that this pain can, of course, also include psychological or emotional damage, it is not bounded to purely physical pain. I appreciate this definition because it touches on the level of damage refugees experience; however, no definition can realistically capture the effects this pain has on its victims. Through the documentary God Grew Tired of Us and Asgedom’s book Of Beetles and Angels, we have seen a glimpse of the stories of some refugees, and similarly to what Melissa so wisely stated in our ACC orientation “And once you have meet a refugee, you have done just that—you have met a refugee,” we cannot assume that because we have seen or read about a few refugees stories, we know what the life of a refugee is like. However, one common theme threaded throughout every refugee’s story is joy, hope, and love embedded deep within his or her spirit. To me, the most incredible part about these refugees we have encountered is not that they have gone through pain with fortitude, but that they have gone through pain with fortitude and have never stopped being a source of light within their world even for a single moment. “Of the gifts that we can give, the greatest is to see beauty in each other—in essence, to give beauty to each other. When we give that beauty, we prepare our hearts to receive it back.” (Asgedom, pg 134). These are the words Asgedom leaves us with after sharing his heart-wrenching story of pain, hardship, but ultimately beauty. The spirit of perseverance and hard work while spreading joy through beauty displayed within every refugee we have encountered—this is what changes and inspires me. That spirit additionally leaves me asking, how? How is it possible to go through what this person has been through, and still display hope and joy in everything they do? I can only hope that I may learn to live with a similar spirit radiating from me, and that ultimately my life will change the lives of others just as the stories from these refugees has changed mine.