Rise Up

My dearest readers,

after recovering from a bad virus infection I am reaching out to you in the midst of this rare occasion of me being sick and, of course, under the shadows of the annual Easter festivities. With these two occasions crossing, what is more apparent than to write about rising, about how we can rise up out of the challenges and the at times given profound monotony in life?

Andra Day has put ‘rising up’ into a phenomenal song I’m sure we’re all familiar with. She sings not only about rising like the day, or rising unafraid, or rising up in spite of the ache, but she sings even more so about doing that a thousand times again. Now this implies not only that she has the capacity and the need to rise up, but her voice is also a testimony that she has done it before. How often do we get trapped in life, hoping to somehow rise up—not only in a conventional sense but in that of rising above ourselves? Often just that is needed, necessary, even mandatory in order for us to go further. And we must have confidence, knowing that it is our time to rise up; and we must be aware that we have the ability to not only do it once but again and again. When you know you can rise up, you know that you have done it before, and not just once, but quite a few times. You can do it, you can rise up, and you know so; you know that you can rise up and make a move and move mountains. But the question is: when your life calls you out, are you willing to rise?

In the center of the many city lights that surround us, in all corners of a speedy life, where we are nobody, one of the millions and masses in the flesh, right there and right then we tend to drown out in the crowd(s). We may wonder why we would matter, why what we do would matter. In times like these it is tough to rise up, because when that feeling of being nobody kicks in—and I’m certain it appears to all of us sooner or later—we feel like no more than a cog in a giant wheel that is beyond us, exceeding what we can grasp. But if we want to go further, it are times like these, exclusively, that demand our rising.

We might get intimidated, overwhelmed with what is at hand; but exactly in that time we shall remember that we can and must rise up, we should know that we have the ability to do it. And we should further have confidence that we are given an opportunity to do it, and do it again. After many knockdowns in life it can be tiresome to rise up again, but these many knockdowns shall be our source of confidence to just rise up again when our lives pull us down and under. I’m sure you’ve done it before, you have risen up. And “[h]ow can you rise, if you have not burned?” (Hiba Fatima Ahmad); and how can you rise up, if you haven’t fallen before?

Rising implies that we have fallen before. Imagine a plane that can only take off when it’s still on the ground. You might still be on the ground, but it is precisely that state that puts you in a position out of which you can rise up. Andra Day does not begin her song with rising in the first place. She begins her first verse with the words “[y]ou’re broken down and tired of living life in a merry-go-round.” And out of that she rises up, high like the waves, again and again.

Rise and shine, they say…and we shall note that “[t]he beauty of a morning glory, is that of its patient wait for the sun to bloom in the morning!” (Mary Kate). Your time will come, and when it comes all you have to do is rise, rise like the sun, morning after morning, every morning, and shine across the world every day.