[Editor’s Note] The EDRM is committed to our entire community, and each whole person within it. A story for the times.
“Since I survived that year…I shall survive anything.”
— Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe
Actually, the full passage reads as so: “’Since I survived that year,’ he always said, ‘I shall survive anything.’ He put it down to his 
inflexible will.” Very little seems more apropos today than that thought. The context of this reflection from the character Okonkwo is a long drought, followed by torrential rain, and then multiple days of persistent, “less violent” rain, all of which devolved into spoiled crops, as such no means to earn a living, deep sadness, and even a suicide committed out of despair. What’s more, whatever seeds sown that were not starved by the drought, were subsequently drowned by the rain. But the key reflection is that surviving reveals our strength. Minimally it reveals that one knows how to survive. As unemployment steadily rises like a persistent rain, and debts flow violently against the ebb of one’s income, the only true requirement at this moment is survival.
The truth is that most now face this reality, survival.
When I was a kid being raised in Deep South Alabama, my parents moved the entire family even deeper south to my dad’s small, quaint, rather green childhood hometown. At twelve, and during subsequent summer breaks from school, I joined the family farm for what would eventually be three years, working alongside my grandfather, uncle, and male cousins. (This was the eighties.) We began our mornings harvesting field peas, tomatoes, and okra. We also built fences, and hauled hay. During my first summer morning on the farm, I asked about snakes. I wondered if I would reach down to pluck a pea pod from the plant and be viciously surprised by a snake’s venomous attack. (Yes, I have always been literary and prone to theatricality.) My uncle, patiently, advised that I should listen for a rattle and that I always move away from the sound of the rattle. Pretty simple. I recall that he explained if it was a simple black snake, the Black Racer, to not worry about it because they were nonvenomous. He further elaborated with the local lore that the Black Racer was known to lift itself from its belly when one encountered it and chase the unwitting discoverer as he ran away. He must have seen my panic, and after having had his fun, revealed that the best response was to turn and face the snake. When one turned to face the snake, it would descend to its belly and scurry away. I spent years wondering if I would have the courage to turn and face the snake, but the mysterious Black Racer was gracious enough to avoid me and perhaps chase others.
As a young adult, however, metaphorical black racers often raised from their bellies and confronted me when I least expected them, usually when I was happy, or at least satisfied with life. I just as often ran. I built strong but unreliable mental legs as result of so much running. And, no matter how quick I became at running from issues as they arose, I was never particularly agile or perseverant enough to avoid the grasps of life’s hard lessons. One day, late in my thirties and exhausted, I stopped running; I thought, “It’s time to turn and face the snake.” I developed this practice called courage, and faced down my contretemps one after the other, and seemingly all at once at various points.
I survived through courage.
My problems could not defeat me as my courage grew. In fact, they appeared to recoil at being faced down. In the end, the snake did appear, and all I had to do to survive was face it.
SPOILER ALERT: As it turns out, the chasing Southern Black Racer has never existed, at least not the chasing trait; it was an “old wives’ tale”! I am grateful I never learned that before developing courage.
