The Light We Carry: Overcoming in Uncertain Times

by Michelle Obama

We were learning that life was not in our control.

You fall, you get up, you carry on.

That’s what tools are for. They help keep us upright and balanced, better able to coexist with uncertainty. They help us deal with flux, to manage when life feels out of control. And they help us continue onward, even while in discomfort, even as we live with our strands exposed.

There’s nothing easy about finding your way through a world loaded with obstacles that others can’t or don’t see. When you are different, you can feel as if you’re operating with a different map, a different set of navigational challenges, than those around you. Sometimes, you feel like you have no map at all. Your differentness will often precede you into a room; people see it before they see you. Which leaves you with the task of overcoming. And overcoming is, almost by definition, draining.

Being different conditions you toward cautiousness, even as it demands that you be bold.