In her essay "In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens" Alice Walker wrote of the black women's struggle, with all the injustice and savagery they were subjected to. The harsh reality that they were really nothing more than "the mule of the world," as was so honestly stated by Jean Toomer, is the same reality that, today, every individual is forced to endure. The debauchery of heart and mind is not, and never was limited to the black women, or any sole minority. The fact is, even those enforcing the deprivation of creativity and spirituality in others are subjected to the same in their lives. This is more evident today than in my grandmother's day, although the bereavement doesn't appear as drastic today because now we live in a time of "equality," where every individual is presented with the same demands and depraved ideals for a successful life. It's been slow coming for centuries, but in the past five or six decades we've experienced a technological renaissance in which we've replaced creation with production.
             The women Walker wrote about were pillars, in her view, of what it meant to survive the insurmountable obstacles they were presented with. These women were over worked, abused, degraded and, to say the least, never given a fair chance at a life that could be considered worthwhile and meaningful. These conditions, however, when considered outside the contexts of slavery, and applied to human life on a whole, appear as the common struggle to find and express that inert fire, and thereby have a reason to get up in the morning. Every person has that spark inside themselves, that urning or explosive reactant that needs an outlet through which it can be expressed. That expression, whether it be as extravagant as a painting, or as unsuspecting as a coy laughter, is the fuel for survival.
             I've been fortunate to have experienced just such expressions throu...