Ek het ook na die toespraak van Daw Aung San Suu Kyi geluister toe sy die Nobelprys vir Vrede na 21 jaar in ontvangs geneem het.
Dit het my ook opgeval hoe sy gepraat het oor dit wat haar in die lang jare van afsondering en alleenheid aan die gang gehou het. Want, 'n mens kan maklik dink dat jy vergeet word. En om vergete te voel is soos om bietjie dood te gaan. Goedheid en vriendelikheid het haar aan die gang gehou.
Kindness is die Engelse woord wat sy, so welsprekend, gebruik het. Dit val my altyd, na al die jare wat ek daaroor skryf en wat ek dit probeer vertaal, dat hierdie Engelse woord nie regtig in Afrikaans 'n ekwivalent het nie. Nie vir my nie. Die "kindness" waarvan Aung San Suu Kyi praat, het meer met ontferming te doen. En, wie Spiritualiteit ken, sal weet dat ontferming 'n kernwoord in alle spiritualitieite is.
Dit het my dadelik opgeval, terwyl ek na haar geluister het, dat sy so gefokusd oor ontferming praat. Hierdie vrou, jare lank die teiken van 'n gewetenlose regime, kon vele ander onderwerpe uitgelig het. Maar sy kies om oor vriendelikheid, goedheid en ontferming te praat.
Sy het, sou ons kon sê, uit haar hart gepraat. Haar woorde is deurdrenk met lewenservaring. Sy het dit gevoel en ervaar: om, oor die jare, maand na maand, dag na dag, in die sleur en die seerkry van onderdrukking, moed te put uit die gebaar van omgee, van uitreik, van goedheid en vriendelikheid. Kyk, sê sy, selfs die kleinste van klein gebare van goedheid, het vir my orent gehou.
Sy weet waarvan sy praat.
En daarom, in die hoë geselskap van die Noorweegse gehoor, vertel sy hoe haar ervaring haar oortuig het van die "waarde" van goedheid.
Hierdie dapper vasbyter is gevoed deur mense wat hulle oor haar ontferm het. Maar, as 'n mens die res van haar toespraak luister, kom 'n mens agter dat sy self vol ontferming is: moenie mense vergeet wat nog steeds ly nie, pleit sy in haar oomblik van glorie vir slagoffers van wreedheid. Haar hart is by die verontregtes, die mishandeldes, die vervolgdes.
Elke gebaar van vriendelikheid en goedheid, sê die vrou, het my oortuig dat daar nooit genoeg sulke gebare in die wêreld kan wees nie. Vriendelikheid kan 'n mens se lewens verander.
Hoe dikwels lees ons ons eie geestelike tradisie vanuit hierdie hoek? Kyk maar, byvoorbeeld, hoe filter ons die gelykenis van die Samaritaan deur die dwangbuis van liefde oor nasionale grense heen ("jy moet buite jou eie groep uitreik"). En dit is, in tye van eng nasionalisme en self-beheptheid, sekerlik 'n belangrike boodskap om in die gelykenis raak te sien.
Maar is die dieper vraag in die gelykenis nie veel eerder nie: hoe reik jy uit na ander?
Die Samaritaan blink immers uit in barmhartigheid, in goedheid, in ontferming: hy klim van sy perdjie af, verbind wonde, dra swaar aan die lydende, aangerande mens.
Hoekom preek ons so baie oor die Samaritaan en heeltemal te min oor die Barmhartige Samaritaan?
As ontferming, vriendelikheid, goedheid 'n kernwoord in Spiritualiteit is, waarom hoor 'n mens nie meer daarvan nie? En waarom sien ons dit, in ons kwaai, kompeterende, onverdraagsame, ondankbare, haastige lewens so min?
En dit, terwyl Aung San Suu Kyi tereg opmerk: ontferming kan mense se lewens radikaal verander.
Hier is 'n opsomming van haar toespraak:
OSLO — When she was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991, while under house arrest in Myanmar, Daw Aung San Suu Kyi, said Saturday, she realized that the Burmese “were not going to be forgotten.”
When the Norwegian Nobel Committee awarded her the prize, she said in her Nobel lecture here on Saturday, 21 years later, it was recognition that “the oppressed and the isolated in Burma were also a part of the world, they were recognizing the oneness of humanity.” But “it did not seem quite real, because in a sense I did not feel myself to be quite real at that time,” she said. “The Nobel Peace Prize opened up a door in my heart.”
She said the prize “had made me real once again; it had drawn me back into the wider human community,” and it had given the oppressed people of Burma, now Myanmar, and its dispersed refugees, new hope. “To be forgotten,” Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi added, “is to die a little.” In a quiet, throaty voice on Saturday she asked the world not to forget other prisoners of conscience, both in Myanmar and around the world, other refugees, others in need, who may be suffering twice over, she said, from oppression and from the larger world’s “compassion fatigue.”
It was a remarkable moment for the slight Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi, who turns 67 next week and is now a member of Parliament and the leader of Myanmar’s opposition. She dressed in shades of purple and lavender, her hair adorned with flowers. It is a gesture she makes in honor of her father, Gen. Aung San, an independence hero of Burma, who was assassinated in 1947, when she was 2, but whom she remembers threading flowers through her hair.
The audience in Oslo’s City Hall, which included the Norwegian royal family, listened raptly, applauding often, standing to clap when Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi entered the hall and when she finished her speech, which was at the same time modest, personal and touching, an appeal to find practical ways to reduce the inextinguishable suffering of the world. “Suffering degrades, embitters and enrages,” she said. “War is not the only arena where peace is done to death.”
Absolute peace is an unattainable goal, she said. “But it is one towards which we must continue to journey, our eyes fixed on it as a traveler in a desert fixes his eyes on the one guiding star that will lead him to salvation.”
She had thought much on the Buddhist idea of “dukkha,” or suffering, in her long years of isolation and house arrest, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi said. “If suffering were an unavoidable part of our existence, we should try to alleviate it as far as possible in practical, earthly ways.”
One crucial avenue, she said, was simple kindness. “Of the sweets of adversity, and let me say that those are not numerous, I have found the sweetest, the most precious of all, is the lesson I learned on the value of kindness,” she said, with a rare shred of humor. “Every kindness I received, small or big, convinced me that there could never be enough of it in the world.” Kindness, she said, “can change the lives of people.”
Her comments on Myanmar were careful but considered. She called for national reconciliation and cease-fire agreements between the government and “ethnic nationality forces,” which she said she hoped would “lead to political settlements founded on the aspirations of the peoples, and the spirit of the nation.”
“In my own country,” she said, “hostilities have not ceased in the far north,” and “to the west, communal violence” has flared in the days before she left Myanmar. She spoke of the Burmese concept of peace, which she defined as “the happiness arising from the cessation of factors that militate against the harmonious and the wholesome.” The term, nyein-chan, translates literally, she said, as “the beneficial coolness that comes when a fire is extinguished.”
She had never thought of winning prizes, she said. “The prize we were working for was a free, secure and just society,” she said. “The honor lay in our endeavor.”
Her endurance against dictatorship and steadfastness to her principles has brought comparisons to Nelson Mandela. Her life has also been one of personal sacrifice.
For her country, and for the legacy of her father, Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi could be said to have given up her family: her beloved husband, Michael Aris, a professor of Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at Oxford, and her two children, Alexander and Kim, who grew up largely without her. Myanmar’s former military government persistently refused to grant them visas to visit her, even when Mr. Aris grew ill with prostate cancer, apparently in the hope that she would leave Myanmar herself to visit them.
She refused to do so, fearing with reason that the government would not allow her back into the country. After Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi’s initial house arrest in 1989, Mr. Aris was allowed to visit only five times, the last time during Christmas in 1995. He died in March 1999, on his 53rd birthday; to the end, he supported her decision to remain in Myanmar.
She had returned to Myanmar from Britain in March 1988 to nurse her ill mother, Daw Khin Kyi, and became caught up in the swirling protests against years of eccentric autocracy and military rule. In January 1989, just after her mother’s funeral, she and her husband sat for a rare interview at her mother’s house in Rangoon, now Yangon, as their children ran about the rooms, with their faded colonial elegance.
“You know, when I married Michael,” she said, “I made him promise that if there was ever a time that I had to go back to my country, he would not stand in my way. And he promised.” Mr. Aris said: “That’s true. She made me promise.”
She said then that she understood how much her stature depended on her father’s aura. “I don’t pretend that I don’t owe my position in Burmese politics to my father, at least at the beginning,” she said. “It’s time to look at what people do.”
At another moment, she said: “Really, I’m doing this for my father. I’m quite happy they see me as my father’s daughter. My only concern is that I prove worthy of him.”
Once fate intervened, she chose the life she has lived, and there is little doubt that she has proved herself fierce, loyal and worthy, both to her father and to her people.
Thorbjorn Jagland, the chairman of the Norwegian Nobel Committee, praised her and thanked her “for your fearlessness, your tenacity and your strength.” He said: “Your life is a message to all of us.”
