Resilience. You can choose to define it as the ability to recover from a difficult task or even as temperamental elasticity, but no, there is much much more to this word.

Growing up, having seen my fair share of trials and tribulations has instilled in me the importance of resilience. I can go as far back as the time when I was the tender age of nine years old and had to deal with the loss of my uncle's wife, who I lovingly called “Sonia Mami.” She was much more than a relative to me; I shared a deep bond with her because she had been a constant in my childhood, and was the one person in my family who shared the same interests as I. I used to cook and paint with her, which are two of my greatest interests in my life.

Her passing was something that shook me to my core. I can still remember the moment my mother broke the news to me. It was a Saturday, and I was working on a school assignment to create charts and posters for a school bake sale. My mum had interrupted my time with my friends and pulled me aside to say, “Beta (son) Sonia Mami has passed in a car accident.”

At this point my uncontrollable rush of emotions and playback of memories led me to burst into tears. I had never, ever, dealt with loss before.

I was not very resilient - I don’t even know if I knew what resilience meant - but this moment was when I started to learn and value the lessons that my family and community would teach me about resilience.

Sonia’s passing impacted me greatly and I learned many lessons from it. My parents taught me how to replace my rush of emotions with good memories and positive thoughts. My grandparents taught me about loss and religion. I learned that the Quran teaches Muslims that dealing with loss is a test from Allah, and that keeping a hold over your emotions and remembering a loved one with happiness is the key to attaining spiritual peace.

Though this experience taught me much that I value today, there was still much more I needed to learn to be resilient in the future - in the face of grief, loss, and even pain.

One instance that has remained particularly poignant in my life was receiving my ninth grade first term report card. My report card for that particular term had been dismal - I had a horrible grade point average and had been lackadaisical about my academics. This experience and its outcome ended up teaching me two lessons, mainly because of my father’s words about working much harder, and because of what my teachers had mentioned in the “teachers’ remarks” section of the report card. They wrote, “Ryeaan is a great student, who engages and participates actively in class. However, this term he has not achieved what he is capable of.” These words led me to work harder and receive better grades afterwards.

Though there is much more I can say about this topic, I feel that these incidents have been the most moving and poignant for me. Resilience can take many forms in life, from remembering a lost loved one in a positive light to preventing emotions from taking control of you to working harder and driving yourself to achieve all you are capable of.