Marilyn Stowe Blog

A beacon of hope: what the Chilean miners teach us about ourselves

As always the week of Jewish New Year culminates with Yom Kippur. And the Day of Atonement is one of the few times for reflection in my busy life.

It is the week of the year when I make myself stop, take stock and think. No-one could describe me as a religiously observant person, but despite that there is something about this holy week that always makes me pause for thought.

This week of the year is a curious time to those who, like me, don’t understand why our New Year falls just as it’s starting to get darker, with autumn on the way and nature changing. Why doesn’t it take place in spring time?

Nevertheless, I follow a certain set path every New Year. I always ask the questions I never have time to ask myself at other times. I don’t always get the answers, but it’s not for want of asking! Generally though, after this week I am at peace with myself and feeling much better.

I always begin the New Year with thoughts about work racing through my mind. The first two days of the New Year are spent attending the synagogue, followed by a family lunch at mine, my sister’s or my brothers’ home the next day, and I can find it difficult to step away from my desk. Why am I bothering? Wouldn’t I be better off at work?

I’m always inwardly apprehensive about the week that is to come, which culminates in the Yom Kippur fast of more than 24 hours, when there is nothing to prevent you facing up to your innermost self.

But it is also more than that.

I start off detached, but as the hours pass I can’t help but find myself starting to think deeply. I think on life and what it’s all about; often, something completely unexpected will trigger this thought process. And with nothing much to do but think, those tricky questions about that I can’t ever satisfactorily explain, and which have never been satisfactorily explained to me, start to surface once again. I begin to appreciate the inner humanity in all of us.

This year it was triggered by watching and reading about the miners in Chile: 33 of them buried deep down in the earth, trapped in a cavernous mine half a mile underground, with only a small lifeline to keep them alive and safe.

That tiny lifeline is their only means of communication with the world above and their loved ones, as well as their only access point to food and drink. The miners are doing their best. They are keeping hope alive in the most horrendous of conditions. They are setting an example of faith, courage, bravery and hope to all mankind. A fact illustrated every time they appear on our TV screens.

Like the miners, we are all fragile and dependent on a lifeline. But dependent on what, exactly? What is it that we need, not only to survive, but to live life to the full?

I applied my thoughts about human survival in the face of adversity to the people I see in my own community at this time of the year. I was curious to discover how they had fared over the past year.

I’m not a regular attendee at synagogue. I’m one of those people who likes to catch up with people each year. Except this year I missed some of the faces I had been accustomed to seeing and greeting; sadly, they had passed away. Some had died at what seemed to be their allotted time, contented and at peace. Others had not. They, like my friend Fran, had left far too young and fighting to their last breath. They are faces I will never see again.

Some of the people that I did see, however, are filled with life and set magnificent examples to us all. A lady in her 80s who sat quietly alongside me is one of our country’s greatest philanthropists. Certainly formidable, tough and prickly, but also thoughtful and kind, she and her family have just endowed a building at Leeds University. They have also made other contributions to the city: to its art gallery, its parks and elsewhere. Yet there she was, just like last year, quietly and intently reading her prayer book. A tiny, elegant figure drawing no attention to herself at all. That is, except to pass me an occasional sweet!

Others, who I greeted for the first time in a year, have had tough times over the past 12 months and the worries showed on their faces. Some had braved illness and many had braved the recession. Some hugged tight their grandchildren, while mourning their parents. Some, starting new lives without their partners, hugged tight their children. Some had made the decision to leave; others had that decision made for them.

There were also those who had enjoyed a good year: couples getting engaged or married, having children for the first time, or simply passing a peaceful and uneventful year.

Life hits all of us at unexpected times, in wonderful ways – and of course in terrible ways too. That’s the nature of it. Some of us had lives which just ticked quietly by this year, some in which time seemed suspended and some where the ticking simply stopped.

So then I asked myself the tough question: why? Why does life happen so hard, so fast, so indiscriminately to all of us like this?

There are many people who understandably deny faith of any kind, and believe all of life is explained by means of physics and science. There are many scientists who believe that there is more, and who do have faith. Argue as we may about faith and science or belief and non-belief, it seems futile because not one of us will ever know for sure who is right and who is wrong. So shouldn’t we leave it well alone and respect in peace those who do not agree with us? And more so, shouldn’t we all celebrate the power of the human spirit? That which permits us to live lives to the fullest, irrespective of our beliefs?

Somehow, without us fully appreciating or understanding why, we are all of us blessed with our own in-built spirit to help us live our lives. Call it what you will; whether the essence of our humanity, our faith, or pure self-belief, we all have it. We are blessed with an indefinable, innate strength that comes to the fore so we can face whatever befalls us to the best of our abilities. It provides us with the strength and courage that somehow always surfaces to save us, even when everything is crashing down around us, or on those we love.

At the end of this period of thinking I return to the real world and, as usual, I have no answers. I am back where I started, but with a powerful sense of peace, love and hope.

The Chilean miners may not know it, but they are an inspiration to all of us. We can only hope that they are soon rescued, safe and sound from an ordeal so bravely borne.