Facing crisis with calm is a valuable lesson

By Lethbridge Herald on November 26, 2025.

Tadashi (Tad) Mitsui
For the Herald

Fall 2025 has been stressful.  Two friends passed away.  Ray Whitehead was a close friend. His last job was Director of Doctoral Program of the Toronto School of Theology at the University of Toronto. He persuaded me to come back to Canada when I was working in Switzerland in 1978. He was a guest in our apartment attending a meeting. We became good  friends during my years in Toronto.

Another person, Wendy Sherman,  was a friend at the church.  She always sat on the pew near us for twenty five years.  We knew her passing was imminent but waiting was most difficult. Another reason for my stress was the visit of my daughter which was an absolutely happy event to be sure. But when she went back to Toronto, I sadly realized that I might not see her again.  I will soon be 94 years old.

Those events led me to think about my own departure from this world. The end of my life is a certainty but was not the cause of my grief.  The thought of separation from the loved ones is heart wrenching. We should all know that the end of life is the law of nature. Death is an integral part of life. If there is no death, it is not life.   “Eternal life” is an oxymoron. Our ancestors used the word “life” to mean our existence. Eternal life means we will continue to exist after death but in a different way. St. Paul called it “spiritual body.” 

No matter how difficult it is to find the appropriate word, it is important to accept death as normal but not as final.  Accepting such reality is not defeat nor is it surrendering to negativity. It is a step forward.

The memory of the crisis in my earlier life came back and made me realize what I should have learnt but didn’t many years ago. One is to be comfortable in solitude and find peace that enables me to keep thinking calmly, not delusion nor madness. I should have learned it in solitary confinement in 1971 but didn’t. Another is the lesson I learned from an old man who chose to seek wisdom, not convenience.

We don’t plan a crisis;  we run into crises. Some people can stay cool and deal with it.  I couldn’t.  The inside of me was havoc when it came.  

It was at Johannesburg Airport in January, 1971.  It was the first step of my deportation. On that day I flew back to Johannesburg after attending the conference organized by the World Student Christian Federation in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. I landed in Johannesburg to catch a connecting flight to Lesotho where I lived.

I was met by an Immigration officer who came on board as soon as the plane landed and took me to the immigration detention centre. He took me to a room, told me to wait, locked the door, and walked away with my passport.

No one came back for three days except a scared looking waiter who delivered meals.  Nobody told me why I was held up and for how long. I had nothing to read in my carry-on bag. The checked luggage was not delivered. It was solitary confinement except it wasn’t exactly that.

The room was like a nice hotel without telephone and TV. The worst was the worry about my seven years old daughter waiting alone at home. My spouse was going to a conference that day. There was no way to let her know what happened to me. I was trained to be a minister of religion. I should have known all the tricks to keep the peace of mind: meditation and prayer, etc.

The paralyzing fear had overtaken me. Sleep never came.

There was another lesson I should have learned but didn’t. It was from an old man who tried to teach me the importance of sitting and trying to make sense of the given situation.

One evening on a mountain road in Lesotho, an old man was sitting by the roadside looking tired. I stopped the car and offered him a ride.  He said “No.  I walked all day.  I am waiting for my spirit to catch up with me.”

I had the graduate degree that qualified me to teach in university but I didn’t know how to sit and wait for my spirit. Religions speak in the language like prayer and meditation.  I think those words mean, “calm down and think.” Atheists do that, too.

What drove me crazy was my inability to distinguish what I could not do from what I could. I love the prayer the Alcoholic Anonymous members recite, “Grant me the serenity to accept things I can not change, and the courage to change that I can.”

The situation I found myself while locked up in a room in Johannesburg Airport was one I could not do anything about. It was a tough question to meditate on.  

I needed serenity to convince myself to accept my powerlessness. I had to accept it and hope that the world is compassionate and kind. And it was. My daughter was looked after by the kind neighbours’ family.

You cannot pay your way out of aging and death. Fame, social standing, power, and wealth mean nothing when you are at the end of your life.