REsources for Living
Podcast: Download (4.3MB)
Subscribe: More
A few months back 17-year-old Malala Yousafzai became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize. I expect that you’ve heard Malala’s remarkable story—how she was shot in the head by the Taliban for advocating for the right for girls and women in Pakistan to get an education. And how, after long treatment, she has regained her ability to speak, and is continuing to use that voice to speak out for peace and justice and human rights.
There is no doubt in my mind that Malala is an extremely courageous young woman. I can’t even imagine the kind of guts that it takes to stand up for your rights when there are people with guns who are prepared to keep you—and your friends—from getting access to something as basic as the right to an education. But there’s something else that stands out for me about Malala’s courage. Really, she was just going to school.
She was just going to school, like millions of other kids around the world. Kids who manage to learn in refugee camps. Kids who get to school even though they have no home and had no breakfast to start the day. Kids who know that as soon as they get to recess they will have to face a bully. Kids who can only get to school by walking down streets where people regularly get shot. Kids with learning disabilities or anxiety disorders or medical challenges who feel like it’s hard just getting through the day. Kids who are trying to fit in their school work around taking care of little brothers and sisters. Kids who are trying to keep it together while their parents are getting a divorce or are dealing with mental or physical illness.
Around the world, millions of kids show the most extraordinary courage just walking through the door of a schoolroom. And that’s not even counting the courage of children who stand up to bullies when they see someone else is threatened. Or who ask a question when they’re afraid they’ll look stupid. Or walk up to someone they don’t know at lunchtime to ask if they’re OK.
The reality is that even the people who show the most remarkable kinds of courage—the ones who face down the guns—are doing pretty much the same thing as those of us who exhibit the kinds of ordinary courage that will never get you a Nobel Peace Prize. They do what has to be done. They take the next step. They refuse to get stuck in the way things are because they can see that there is a better place, and they know that the only way to get to that better place is to keep putting one foot in front of the other.
The courage part is not so much in the choice to walk past the people carrying guns as it is in the choice to keep walking. As Malala walked to school each day, she didn’t know that small-minded people would really be so afraid of educated women that they would actually try to kill her. Her courage as a teenage girl dedicated to women’s rights in a country that wanted to deny her full personhood was remarkable. But the truly extraordinary courage comes in the fact that her suffering has only made her more determined to keep working for human rights for all people. Her experience of violence has only made her more committed to the cause of peace.
In a speech to the United Nations—her first public speech after the attack—Malala said:
Dear Friends, on the 9th of October 2012, the Taliban shot me on the left side of my forehead. They shot my friends, too. They thought that the bullets would silence us. But they failed. And then, out of that silence came thousands of voices. The terrorists thought that they would change our aims and stop our ambitions, but nothing changed in my life except this: Weakness, fear and hopelessness died. Strength, power and courage were born. I am the same Malala. My ambitions are the same. My hopes are the same. My dreams are the same.
That’s what courage sounds like: the thousands of voices that cry out from the silence. That’s what courage looks like: a girl standing to speak. That’s what courage is: the point where weakness, fear and hopelessness die, because you know that the only real choice is to keep moving forward in the direction of your ambitions and hopes and dreams.
My friends, may strength and power and courage be born again and again throughout all of your truly remark-able journeys toward your dreams.
- REsources for Living - December 1, 2020
- A Fond Goodbye - December 1, 2020
- REsources for Living - November 1, 2020
Comments are closed.