Fighter

"Sometimes readiness and change come only because of all the heartache and pain and deep frustration that has gone on before. That is to say, every sin, every disease, every disappointment, every failure, every bit of difficulty that has ever touched our lives have all been a very necessary part of our entire experience without which we would not have been made ready or prepared to receive the unfoldment of a truly spiritual message. And I say this knowing, just as you know, that some of us have been down and are presently still down, into the very depths of human existence... And yet whatever the degree of difficulty each one of us has had, then it was perhaps that degree of difficulty that each one of us needed!"

- Rubin "Hurricane" Carter

This was written in a letter on April 21, 1982. Rubin Carter, a successful black boxer living in Paterson, New Jersey, had by then been in jail since 1967 for a crime that he did not commit. Fabricated evidence, unreliable witnesses, and racist officers and lawyers stole his wife, children, career, and freedom. But instead of accepting his fate and conforming to the debilitated life that most inmates lead, Carter's hopeful and promising outlook dominate his thinking. Kind of puts things in perspective, huh?