Against All Odds: Inspiring Story Of A War Victim Winning Inner Peace

We really missed images that make us inspired about peace and hopes for the future. And just as the globe was fearing that Asia was at the brink of war, the Syrian War escalated (once again) and reconciliation streamed from the two Koreas.

Here is an inspiring story from a war-weary place in Asia: Vietnam.

This video narrates the story of Le Minh Chau, a Vietnamese artist. His mother unknowingly consumed the water from a chemically contaminated river in Dong Nai, Vietnam while she was pregnant. Consequently, Chau was born with severe birth defects. As described by Emily Buder, the author presenting the synopsis of this short film (of 33 minutes), Chau's "arms happen to be nearly useless; to walk, he shuffles across the ground on a single knee, his one functional leg dragging the other."

Chau is the victim of a war that finished long before he was born (he was born in 1991). In Buder's words:

During the Vietnam War, from 1961 to 1971, the U.S. military deployed an aggressive chemical warfare program codenamed Operation Ranch Hand. American troops in fighter jets sprayed highly toxic herbicides across more than 4.5 million acres of Vietnam in order to weaken the vegetative cover and food supply of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong armies. In this chemical cocktail was Agent Orange, which contains dioxin, a known carcinogen and “one of the most toxic compounds known to humans".

Chau overcame all obstacles and became an artist, realizing his dearest ideal. Director Courtney Marsh followed Chau's story for eight years, creating this documentary called "Beyond the Lines", as Chau became the creator of his own dreams. 

At every juncture, the idealistic and indefatigable Chau fights the limitations of his body—and the words of naysayers—to achieve self-actualization. In the end, he becomes the narrator of his own life’s story.

Inspiring, indeed.

As a side note, there are various other visualized stories in this short film series by the Atlantic under the title "The Atlantic Selects".