It Takes Passion!
It was about a year ago, give or take a couple of months, when I watched the movie Blood Diamond for the first time. The impact that it had on me was unforgettable, but it was not centred on the main storyline or Leonardo DiCaprio’s role. What left me mesmerised was rather Jennifer Connelly’s role as a journalist who had travelled to one of the most dangerous locations in the world in order to get the voices of its people heard. I always knew there were people with such jobs but I had never before watching Blood Diamond actually thought about what it would be like to be one with such an occupation. Danger is overwhelming, struggle is persistent, and passion is absolutely required in order to take such a risk. I was hooked.
Watching Blood Diamond that day was perhaps the strongest reason why I wanted to join NSLC’s Journalism and Mass Communication program, and surely enough I came face to face with the subject of my interest on our first educational field trip.
We visited the Newseum on July 7th 2009. I was absolutely speechless at the amount of history it withheld and reflected. Every corner held a new story dated back to a year, a decade, or a century ago and yet none had gotten old. I was passing one of these corners when something caught my eye. There was a wall, and it was covered from bottom to top with pictures of people. I went closer and looked up. There must have been at least 300 faces looking back at me from their still images. Some were smiling and you could read the pureness of their hearts. Others were not but you could see the shining determination twinkle in their eyes. Some pictures were in colour and others in black and white. What did all these different faces have in common? A passion for journalism, a love for humanity, the courage to risk their lives for what they believed in, and a wall to honour their heroic deaths.
What went through my mind while I was looking at the wall is vivid clear to me because my mind had gone blank. It was like mixing all the different colours of light and getting white in the end. My head was so filled with different thoughts that they all seemed to mix together into something that I could not feel with comprehension, nor could I comprehend it with feeling. I just stood there. I didn’t move and they didn’t move. They kept their eyes on me while mine shifted back and forth between theirs.
How many of us would ever find the strength to do what they did? How many of us would ever be able to sacrifice everything for what we believe in? Mahatma Gandhi once said “be the change you want to see in the world.” How many of us would have enough heart to do that?
