Kim Phuc Phan Thai may not be a household name to most, but the image of her as a nine year old girl running down the street during the Vietnam War surely is. If that were all there was to her, her contribution to history would have ended there, but fortunately, she has risen above her past trauma and uses her experiences to speak at conferences worldwide.
“The pain I consider as my protection. It humbles me, and helps me to never take my life for granted,” she says. Her role as a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador and peace activist takes her many places, and her message is always “I cannot change something that happened to me already. But I can change the meaning.”
There is something truly liberating in experiencing and surviving a traumatic experience. If told beforehand that we would suffer an injury that resulted in sixty-five percent of our skin being permanently scarred by third-degree burns, and lingering pain that would never entirely disappear, we might feel that such an experience would be our final one; we would never live through it. Yet human beings are amazingly resilient and adaptable, as Kim Phuc demonstrates. It’s all a matter of approach.
Our lives are entirely subjective; no one else can tell us what we’re experiencing. So it’s up to us to decide how we want to perceive events. This is true no matter our age, our position, our political affiliation, our social status. Every day I try to be as positive as possible about the challenges I face daily, and I want my son to grow up with a cultivated awareness of his own power. He will decide when he’s had enough, and he will choose to go on despite adversity. Life will not defeat us, no matter what happens.
The great Winston Churchill said it best: “If you’re going through Hell, keep going.”
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