You know, I first heard Invictus when a school administrator in my brother’s school recited it to his class at his 8th grade graduation.  I was in sixth grade at the time, and I didn’t know it then, but my parents were about to get divorced and everything was about to change.

Those words rang in my ears and I repeated them over and over until they were both meaningless and imbued with every possible meaning in my head.  I taped the poem to my desk (along with a few choice others).  And I truly took it to heart, but at the time, I didn’t know.  I didn’t know.  You don’t feel Invictus unless you’ve felt the deck stacked against you, the floor tilt out from beneath you, the world change around you.  You feel the pridefulness of “I am the master of my fate” but not its resolution, not its humility, not its desperation.  You can know what the words mean–how charged with punishments the scroll–but they are meaningless until you look at the tally of your life and feel deserving of punishment.

It would be a severe case of hubris to say I understand the poem now, but I understand it more than I did then.  I know the words by heart–by heart–and they find a new meaning with me, but I know it’s not the only one.  I know that later in my life, I’ll come to understand the poem in a more tragic and inspiring way, lumping together all the sadnesses that are yet to come and seeing the triumph in them anyway.

However, I also know that possibly the most important phrase of the whole poem, which the movie certainly appreciated, is I thank whatever Gods may be for my unconquerable soul. There’s a sense of destiny in the poem and the movie that I always believed in; I felt that when I was in sixth grade and I still feel it.  I felt it more than I expected to, and I realized how much belief I have inside me that I haven’t been giving myself credit for.

Worry has been pushing belief out of my heart, but it’s not in me to worry so much.  I know life will provide for me, even if it’s in ways I don’t anticipate or initially can’t appreciate.  My life is going exactly where it’s meant to be going, and one way or another, I’ll make my way as a published writer.  Despite the bludgeonings of chance.  Because I refuse to have a soul that’s conquered.

Out of the night that covers me,
Black as the Pit from pole to pole,
I thank whatever gods may be
For my unconquerable soul.

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

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