Grit
The offspring of passion and perseverance, the understudy of failure and acceptance, a distant cousin of kindness – grit is the ability to be powerful not despite your vulnerability but because of it.
It is about having the courage to stand up for our personal and collective truth.
It took a long time today, Sunday, to understand where the tears were coming from as I ran on the treadmill watching 1.6 million people in Paris and 3 million across France gather in solidarity against the three days of deadly attacks in France.
I was simply warming up before a gym class, listening to Marvin Gaye’s Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, Me, when the headlines scrolling across the TV’s caught my eye. Normally I avoid looking at the barrage of bad news but the energy coming from the screen compelled me.
The words of a French gentleman came across the screen, We are brothers and sisters. All of us. We must stand together, Muslim, Jew and Christian. Terrorists cannot take away our freedom. They cannot make us afraid.
Tears swelled. Unexpected. I try not to cry at the gym. Makes people nervous.
Obviously, it was about the horrifying loss. About 9/11 being 14 years ago and yet still at the emotional forefront. It was about the threat to freedom of speech. Freedom in general. About whether we are safe.
But, it was about something else too. Something more fierce.
Applause went up from the over million people gathered, as the victims’ families entered the square. And it came to me. The tears were not about loss, but resilience.
They were about the inner strength, the deep resolve, the intense bravery of the victims’ loved ones to have suffered so terrible a personal loss and not be afraid to feel the overwhelming love and support of a country. AND, it was about the millions of people who did not hide from the devastating sadness.
Their applause seemed to shout, WE ARE WITH YOU. YOUR PERSON IS OUR PERSON. WE ARE HOLDING YOU… HERE IN FRONT OF THE WORLD, WE STAND TOGETHER SAYING NO, YOU MAY NOT TAKE OUR SPIRIT.
The outpouring of love came from everywhere– London, Madrid, Cairo, Montreal, Beirut, Sydney and Tokyo. . Satirical cartoonists sprouted up around the globe. In their own way, they each said, Je suis Charlie.
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Many religions teach that answers to the most vexing questions about life are shrouded in mystery, and perhaps this is true about where we came from and where we go after we leave this shell we call life; but as we live, now, in the moment, truth itself is not a mystery; it lives openly and objectively; its logic leads to “the true,” its art to beauty, its science to facts, its morality to goodness, and its humanity to empathy. But, religious anarchists (old word for terrorist) fear truth, even the truth of their own humanity (for they have no empathy, or they would not blow up innocents), fear what life looks like stripped of all prejudices and assumptions. We cry in jubilation, when we watch the millions who march in France, because it raises awareness that we are not alone in honoring the verities. We are all Charlies. And, despite the craziness of religious and political zealotry (sometimes on all sides), humankind by and large lifts itself above the murderous chatter of extremists, humankind does move to higher ground, even though the death toll often exceeds counting—, and for this too, we cry.
Love ‘we are mot alone in the verities’!