Pascale Saad

 

 

When despair for the world grows in me, and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my child’s life may be, when all I can see and talk about is garbage and catastrophes; when I look around and realize that the politicians, who are supposed to give us our rights as citizens, aren’t doing their duties and couldn’t care less about me or you; when I find out that most of the civil society movements were just playing politics with hidden agendas while pretending to be waste management experts; when I notice that all the above participated in converting my green Lebanon into a dumpsite… I feel helpless and disgusted. So I close my eyes and lie down, taking my mind to a place where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds and where the majestic cedar breathes. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting with their light. For a time, I rest in the grace of the world, and I am free.