Clearly, the coronavirus is testing everyone’s patience and resolve. Yet, amid the uncertainty, a resilient spirit thrives.
To provide a bit of a diversion from the news around us, we’ve asked our community contributors to share their personal stories of optimism during these troubling times.
Their stories will appear weekly. We hope you find them inspirational. We hope they provide you with some perspective. And we hope they remind you, as captured in some of their personal stories, that we are all in this together.
‘Hope will guide us through’
In a speech given at the commencement ceremony at Brown University in 1996, His Highness the Aga Khan, the 49th spiritual leader of the Shia Ismaili Muslims, said, “The right to hope is the most powerful human motivation I know.”
Let’s face it: We are struggling to deal with the daily deluge of information on how to protect ourselves and our communities from the Coronavirus while also dealing with its human, societal and economic impacts.
No matter how uncertain and challenging these times are, hope will guide us through.
History teaches us that when communities come together with hope and mutual respect and humility, they can stare down the problems they face, no matter how challenging they appear.
Today’s crisis is no different.
By coming together in the same spirit of hope, we can and will overcome this calamity and emerge even stronger than before.
Most faiths suggest in one way or another that humankind has been created from a single soul, and from it, men and women, so that people can understand and appreciate the other.
Diverse communities around the world share a common set of ethical principles, chief among them being to look after your neighbor.
So regardless of your faith, let us use our shared human values to guide us in this moment of crisis and put our faith in hope so that we can, together, overcome the fear of the unknown.
Dr. Behnoosh Momin lives in Dunwoody and serves in a voluntary capacity for communications and outreach on the Ismaili Council for the Southeastern United States.
