How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future

by Maria Ressa

You don’t know who you are until you’re forced to fight for it.

How do you decide what to fight for? Sometimes it’s not your choice. You live your way into it because the sum of all your choices brings you to that point.

Meaning is not something you stumble across or what someone gives you; you build it through every choice you make, the commitments you choose, the people you love, and the values you hold dear.

When you take a risk, you have to trust that someone will come to your aid; and when it’s your turn, you will help someone else. It’s better to face your fear than to run from it because running won’t make the problem go away. When you face it, you have the chance to conquer it. That was how I began to define courage.