Dear,
“Bloom where you are planted”. Randy Felix Malayao, Martyr
“To love, to be loved, to never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget” – Arundhati Roy
I keep these two quotes closely to my heart whenever fatigue, anxiety or even burn out gets to me. They are reminder that for us to be able to do our tasks of serving the people, we also have to remember to take care of ourselves and allow our family, organisation and community to take care of us too, so we can do our work.
We discover self care every day as we go about our work and it does not have to be grand. We dont have to realise it only when sadness, physical illness and our mental and psychological well-being are already incurable or almost incurable. We must not deny ourselves rest or laughter or healthy food or sleep. We all need these to be strong and to have a time to reflect back and to build healthy relationships that would be our anchor or havens aside from the strength we build in ourselves.
The tasks are challenging, tiring but we must learn to cope and gather inspiration from the events we witness.
We are honored and humbled to be in this work. The challenges are great. But we all have in our hearts hope that we can leave the world better than when we found it.
Payt Latta (Carry on with the fights!)