"Good fortune and misfortune take effect through perseverance. The way of heaven and earth becomes visible through perseverance. The way of sun and moon become bright through perseverance. All movements under heaven become uniform through perseverance.”
-I Ching (B.C. 1150)
I saw a powerful, moving, and soulful movie by Oliver Stone called “Heaven and Earth,” starring Tommy Lee Jones and Hiep Thi Le. It is a true story about Le Ly (Hiep Thi Le) a small-village Vietnamese woman experiencing war and barbarism in her torn country and eventually moving to America to successfully start her own business. Tommy Lee Jones plays the troubled American Soldier that Le LY falls in love with and marries. He delivers a stellar performance dealing with the de-humanizing training of the Marine Corps which turns him into a ‘killing machine.’
Connected to her land by planting and harvesting and her Buddhist spirituality, Le Ly’s peaceful village life is ripped apart by war and her destiny thrown to the four winds. She goes threw torture, rape, and unimaginable suffering finally finding herself ‘in between war and peace, America and Vietnam, in between heaven and earth.’
But her spiritual strength and indomitable will to survive carries her through and she learns that suffering is a gift "to teach us to be strong when we are weak, to be brave when we are afraid, to be wise in the midst of confusion and to let go of that which we can no longer hold."
Watch the movie when you get a chance or examine some of the suffering you or someone close to you has experienced and write a brief letter to yourself about what life lessons you have learned around suffering, its emotional impact, and its wisdom.
Heaven and Earth - To learn more about this author, visit Sharif Khan's Website.
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Sharif Khan
(Visit Sharif's Website)
Sharif Khan is a business writer,
copywriter, book publishing consultant,
and author of the leadership bestseller,
Psychology of the Hero Soul (www.HeroSoul.co
m). If you need help with an important
writing project or ongoing assignment and
would like a no-cost, no-obligation quote,
call 416-417-1259 or send an email to: sharif@h
erosoul.com. “Sharif knows how to
write clear and concise copy for business.
He is quick, to the point, and a pleasure
to work with,” writes Carl Nanni, former
VP, Kraft Canada
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