"I carry a bag" (#119; Topic A)

The keynote speaker of a day-long workshop on Living Well With Cancer I attended today, co-sponsored by a hospital, an HMO, and a TV station, was by a cancer survivor, an African-American woman in her early 30s who is also a pastor of a century-old church in DC. She talked, movingly, about her personal life, from being a poor kid in the District to her unending struggle for financial survival in early days, to her being inflicted with cancer, to her decade-long study to be a pastor, and to her being elected to her present position a few years ago. For visual impact, she carried a bag -- and said, repeatedly, that "I carry a bag." The bag, actually, is a two-in-one; as she succeeded in fighting off her early misfortunes, she discarded the outer bag to reveal a smaller bag -- and suggesting, symbolically, of shedding some of her baggages. While justifiably proud of her achievements, I nevertheless detected an underlying sense of unfairness. (I was sitting at the first row, in a seat that was closest to her, so I could see her expressions quite clearly.) As a person, she worked hard; she played by the rules -- but she had to struggle most of her life, to "fight back," first (my conjecture) for her skin color and, later, for her unwelcome disease. Here, she used the phrase "We fight this together" repeatedly, perhaps to the "sisters" who were in the audience (perhaps two-fifths of the attendees today were African-Americans, an unusually large percentage, suggesting their susceptibility to cancer). Perhaps she equated the attendees to her congregation, instilling hope in them -- to fight back, whether in life or for cancer.
Posted at 11:59 pm, Saturday, April 8, 2006