i admire you.

I realize so many people have been so much stronger than I have understood.
People like san, shan, tze and many more.
Your strength is not a gleaming, steely, obvious hardness; it is an inner resilience to bend and not to break in the face of adversity.
And while doing so, to continue on with the rest of life.

All of us have problems; all of us encounter challenges. It is never the circumstance or the challenge that is the end; I like to think of it as the means to an end.
We can choose to be above my circumstances, or under them;
We can choose to emerge stronger or admit defeat.
We can choose to remain the self-same people that we have been, or we can choose to grow and change.

You are inspirational, my students.