Believe: The Power of the Human Spirit

***AUTHOR'S NOTES***
I origianly wrote this piece to honor a hockey player, Valadimir Konstantinov and team Massuse Sergi after the limo accident, following after the 1997 Stanley Cup Championship for the Detroit Red Wings, and later pulled it out again to lightly revise it in April of 1999, after the school shootings at Columbine. It has a duel message that conved the power of the human spirit, and how it can endure the darkest hours, to rebuild form the ashes. My piece went with the banner my school sent to Columbine, and few months later also appeared in the school's newspaper, "The Panther Prowl", where one student acctually came to me after seeing it saying thank you. I found out later from some of those who hung out with that person that they believed that there friend was thinking of suicide, and that seeing my piece may have stopped them from making that fatal choice...

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I was always taught,
To believe in myself,
To believe in others,
In times,
Of there greatest need,
To show the way...

Believe,
Truth,
Honor,
Faith,
They give us,
The strength,
To carry on,
In times of challenge...

We will rise again,
Like the Phoenix,
Who rose,
From the ashes,
To keep going...

Strength,
Commitment,
Sacrafice,
The power of human will...

We will call forth,
The strength,
From within,
To rise again...

Believe,
The power of the human spirit,
From deep within,
Will rise,
To the challenges,
And conquer all.