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"I had this belief that I couldn?t just accept to be treated as an object. It was a problem of dignity."

"But it wasn?t that. It was just that I couldn?t accept that they would call us by number, because I thought it would make it easier for them to kill us if they had to kill an object, a number."

Ingrid Betancourt describes her captivity... and its aftermath:

Betancourt says she made some immediate decisions about her new life: First, she would wear perfume every day; second, she would never deny herself the opportunity to eat cake.

"I promised to have ice cream in my diet, and I promised to change my priorities," she says.  In the jungle, one of the few books Betancourt had access to was the Bible, and she read it over and over again.  One passage stuck out:  "It says that when you cross the valley of tears, and you arrive to the oasis, the reward of God is not success, it?s not money, it?s not admiration or fame, it?s not power. His reward is rest. So that?s what I want for me now."

Her book is a big best seller. I wonder how many readers come to that cake-and-ice-cream part and think: Yes! I must eat cake and ice cream.... even though in their whole lives they've never left the oasis.

Full post as published by Althouse on September 26, 2010 (boomark / email).