A Birthday Piece

Hello everyone! Actually its my first time posting here since I am also new here, soo maybe a little bit of warm welcome everyone? I just want to share a piece of encouragement to all of us here specially in this times wherein we are all facing this pandemic. Soo I hope you will like it.

I gave my students a writing prompt nine months ago, when life was still selfish, and we weren't conscious of our every breath, movement, and action.

The impulse was bravery.

When is it important for us to have courage? What is the definition of courage? When it comes to religion, what is courage? Oh. Family? Boyfriends?

I sat down with them to compose, and this is what I wrote:

As I try to find the stepping stones to raise myself above fear, courage sometimes gets caught in my throat. When I admit I'm scared, the tears always start to drop, and sometimes these tears are the fuel for the rage I need to stand up and get things done.

My faith needs courage because the world believes that those who turn to the poor are the ones who turn to good.

They think faith is a crutch, an excuse, a way of denying the pain of life. To be able to believe, they don't know how powerful the heart needs to be.

When my confidence is sitting in my hands, torn to shreds, I call on courage.

When my voice is hoarse from crying out to a G-d that I know is there, I ask for courage, but I can't hear it.

On rainy days, I ask for bravery.

When I look into my future and don't know how the outline will be filled out, I ask for bravery.

I call upon bravery, and I call upon confidence, because they are one and the same sometimes.

A part of me feels strange to say that life now requires courage. I associate real courage with risky danger, sitting on the front lines, looking in the eye at risk and doing what you still have to do. So, yes I would say anyone who works in the medical sector right now is brave. But about the rest of us?

Those of us who are asked to stay at home? In order to escape danger? In order to keep ourselves safe?

This doesn't actually sound valiant. It feels very stifling. Really, life is unpredictable, and that makes me nervous. Right now the things that I can rely on to give me happiness, such as teaching my students or hanging out with friends and family, are no longer reliable sources of happiness in my life.

Which means I'm supposed to turn inward.

And turning inward takes bravery.

It's brave to turn inwards and embrace what you find there.

It's my birthday tonight.

I'm going to turn 23, but everything feels so insignificant and unimportant when the world is in utter turmoil, while I have to overcome my anxiety over and over again while people in their lives endure pain, loss, uncertainty, and epic disruption.

But still it's my birthday.

This is the anniversary of the day I began on this earth.

Which means it's the anniversary of all I've ever done in my life, every leap I've made, every fear I've overcome. "It's the day when God takes me in his arms and says, "I want you here, you need to be on this earth for some reason.

In the midst of the most confounding global experience I've ever lived through what better reminder could I ask for?

For the last few years, I have made a point on my birthday to do spontaneous acts of kindness for others. I have had my students join in often. I've asked you all to join in occasionally.

This year we're not even going to be around people right now. This makes it exponentially more difficult to do small acts of kindness, such as helping someone with their stroller, smiling at a stranger, or paying for it in restaurants or coffee shops right now is not even possible.

But if there ever was a time to reach out to someone with love, it's right now. So, if you can, I ask you to reach out to a friend or family member via FaceTime or text in honor of my birthday and make them happy.

Remind them that we are still readily accessible with goodness and happiness and laughter.

This is not something we have to do alone.

To turn inward requires bravery, and right now a lot of us are being pushed to turn inward.

For all of us, this is not necessarily a comfortable place, particularly when we have carefully structured our lives to make it possible for us not to face our innermost self all the time.

Distractions, jobs, friends, commitments-just it's so easy to make it all build-up, and then because at the end of the day you're so exhausted, it's so justified to tun it out by watching or reading anything. And then a new day starts, and then again, and then again, and we haven't looked in our eyes all week, either.

Right now the necessity to look ourselves in the eye, to embrace ourselves, to find joy and a sense of peace within our own minds is being handed over to us.

This isn't easy. It needs courage.

But for the taking, this chance is ours.

And we're all going to be better for it.

I was discussing this situation briefly with a friend the other day and how exhausted and disturbed I felt by it all, and she asked if I would write about it.

I replied that it seems like so many people are writing, so what else could I say?

"Just your feelings," she said.

So here they are, my fellow human beings: for those in quarantine, for those who are distancing themselves from each other and for all those who are frightened and lost.

These are my emotions.

I hope that they will make you feel a little less alone in your worries, anxiety, and tension.

Keep the confidence.

One day, we'll be out in the dark.

Ps. Credits Google for the Image used.