The Indomitable Spirit

 This year’s been pretty hard. So has the last. I know I’m not alone, but when I find myself sitting in a class, with a friend circle that has seemingly moved on without me because of what feels like me receding from the world as I know it when times get especially rough, it certainly feels like I’m the only one sitting outside of others’ lives. Sometimes, though, it’s nice to know that I’ve come back from it all in the past. Surely, I can do it again. All of this came to mind when I read the last few lines of “Invictus”.

“It matters not how strait the gate,

        How charged with punishments the scroll,

        I am the master of my fate:

        I am the captain of my soul”.

            William Ernest Henley - “Invictus”

There’s an immense feeling of power in these words. There are plenty “I”s being used, which reinforces the idea of the individual being in charge of whichever way they go in life. Henley is relating external obstacles to the soul and implies how it may usually be affected by such challenges, but then contrasting it with terms like “master” and “captain”--and then bringing it back to “I”. 

Bringing it back to what I personally felt from this poem, it stuck with me. It made me want to step back in the circles I’ve left time and time again because I’ve lost sight of who the real master is. The master of self is always the very one “self” belongs to, yet here I am, along with so many others, seeing the foreboding scroll as a death sentence.

The words in this poem aren’t dense such that it’s difficult to decipher what Henley means, but he leaves his audience with just enough room to ponder his words. How might they apply to their own lives? Who is lucky enough to have the indomitable spirit that Henley describes here?

One thing’s certain: I want it. And after reading it, I feel like I can most certainly have it. Just like Henley writes in this very same poem, though, “My head is bloody, but unbowed”, so if I want to take hold of the unshaken image of an unconquerable soul, I have to keep looking forward. Not any other way.