When all the public eye sees are headscarves instead of individual stories, our community is collectively tokenized. It creates the perception that opportunity is limited and only a rare few of us can make it. Whenever that happens to an already marginalized community, it pits its own members in a competition against one another instead of against the restrictive frameworks that put us in that position in the first place. The first hijabi whatever won't eliminate Islamophobia just as the first black president hasn't eliminated racism, though both are signifiers of some type of progress — symbols of ascending beyond adversity.
There are seasons in our lives when we stand emotionally vulnerable, naked, affronted, without hope and broken. What of these dark difficult times? It’s in these moments of deep humility and brokenness that exposes us for who we are. Adversity is a litmus test of our spirit. Don’t begrudge it. It’s where God does his greatest work. When you come out on the other side, and you will, you’ll receive the gift of knowing exactly who you are and what you’re truly made of and that’s a small price to pay… if you stop and really think about it. ~Jason Versey
One thing I always admired about Daddy was the way he could bounce back from adversity. From the very beginning of his life, he’d had more than his share of broken dreams and disappointments. He lived through the Depression, a war, a couple of failed businesses and the deaths of two wives, but he always found a way to pick up the pieces and go on. When I’ve hit low points in my own life, I could hear his voice in the back of head saying, “Baby, you’ve got to roll with the punches.
One of the central elements of resilience, Bonanno has found, is perception: Do you conceptualize an event as traumatic, or as an opportunity to learn and grow? “Events are not traumatic until we experience them as traumatic,” Bonanno told me, in December. “To call something a ‘traumatic event’ belies that fact.” He has coined a different term: PTE, or potentially traumatic event, which he argues is more accurate.The theory is straightforward. Every frightening event, no matter how negative it might seem from the sidelines, has the potential to be traumatic or not to the person experiencing it. Take something as terrible as the surprising death of a close friend: you might be sad, but if you can find a way to construe that event as filled with meaning—perhaps it leads to greater awareness of a certain disease, say, or to closer ties with the community—then it may not be seen as a trauma. The experience isn’t inherent in the event; it resides in the event’s psychological construal. It’s for this reason, Bonanno told me, that “stressful” or “traumatic” events in and of themselves don’t have much predictive power when it comes to life outcomes. “The prospective epidemiological data shows that exposure to potentially traumatic events does not predict later functioning,” he said. “It’s only predictive if there’s a negative response.” In other words, living through adversity, be it endemic to your environment or an acute negative event, doesn’t guarantee that you’ll suffer going forward. What matters is whether that adversity becomes traumatizing.
“We try to put them in situations where they can take their talent and maximize it. We try to get them out of their comfort zone, playing against older, bigger players, so they have to use their minds as well as their skill to succeed. It doesn't matter what sport you play in, there are always going to be kids who are talented when they're young but they never face any adversity. Sometimes, the coaches take from the kids ? say a coach who has a guy that can score five goals a game but doesn't involve his teammates ? down the road, that's a disservice to player. There's a whole different element to being an elite athlete.”
When Death, or adverse Fortune's ruthless gale,Tears our best hopes away, the wounded HeartExhausted, leans on all that can impartThe charm of Sympathy; her mutual wailHow soothing! never can her warm tears failTo balm our bleeding grief's severest smart;Nor wholly vain feign'd Pity's solemn art,Tho' we should penetrate her sable veil.Concern, e'en known to be assum'd, our painsRespecting, kinder welcome far acquiresThan cold Neglect, or Mirth that Grief profanes.Thus each faint Glow-worm of the Night conspires,Gleaming along the moss'd and darken'd lanes,To cheer the Gloom with her unreal fires.
The comparison might strike you as farfetched. What (you might be asking) can a Broadway musical possibly add to the legacy of a Founding Father--a giant of our national life, a war hero, a scholar, a statesman? What's one little play, or even one very big play, next to all that? But there is more than one way to change the world . To secure their freedom, the polyglot American colonists had to come together, and stick together, in the face of enormous adversity. To live in a new way, they first had to think and feel in a new way. It took guns and ships to win the American Revolution, but it also required pamphlets and speeches--and at least one play.
The Celt, and his cromlechs, and his pillar-stones, these will not change much – indeed, it is doubtful if anybody at all changes at any time. In spite of hosts of deniers, and asserters, and wise-men, and professors, the majority still are adverse to sitting down to dine thirteen at a table, or being helped to salt, or walking under a ladder, of seeing a single magpie flirting his chequered tale. There are, of course, children of light who have set their faces against all this, although even a newspaperman, if you entice him into a cemetery at midnight, will believe in phantoms, for everyone is a visionary, if you scratch him deep enough. But the Celt, unlike any other, is a visionary without scratching.
Every society needs heroes. And every society has them. The reason we don't often see them is because we don't bother to look.There are two kinds of heroes. Heroes who shine in the face of great adversity, who perform an amazing feat in a difficult situation. And heroes who live among us, who do their work unceremoniously, unnoticed by many of us, but who make a difference in the lives of others.Heroes are selfless people who perform extraordinary acts. The mark of heroes is not necessarily the result of their action, but what they are willing to do for others and for their chosen cause. Even if they fail, their determination lives on for others to follow. The glory lies not in the achievement, but in the sacrifice.
“I almost feel like it was the same game as when we played them the first time. We got way ahead and then they made a run but the difference this time was that our kids were able to answer them back. We're getting better. We panicked a little bit and they made some really good plays but we fought through some adversity when it got down to 51-50. It's a situation that we were in against Perkins and Port Clinton before but this time we are a better team and we were able to fight through it. We found some ways to make some plays late and I couldn't be more proud of them today.”