Planting seeds of greatness, one by one, Some for nourishment, others for fun, The journey of growth has now begun. Watch and mirror the pro, she knows the way, Grasping the secrets of greatness each day. With a heart sincere and desire strong, Vow in the plow where dreams belong. In trusting and allowing, find peace profound, Navigate the path where hope is found. Expect greatness, nurture seeds with care, But know, before the breakthrough, adversity will be there. What choice will you make, what will you do? When challenges arise and skies aren't blue. Yet, because you've stood firm, your harvest draws near, Don't halt, press onward, your moment is here. Keep going, keep striving, don't dare to despair, For in perseverance, triumph is near. Press forward, prevail, your efforts are clear, In the soil of persistence, your greatness appears. © 2024, Stephene Klein Originally Pandemic Inspired © 2020, Stephene Klein

I lie in the foreign bed within the unfamiliar room, staring up at the unknown ceiling. My heart is galloping like a bronco inside my chest, and a piercing ache develops inside my head. My muscles appear to be in pain, although this could be an illusion. In truth, everything around me could be a mirage. The anti-ligature luminaire attached to the ceiling or the highly secured windows, as well as the fragrance bulbs generating a bittersweet scent, can be a deception. The thoughts in my head run in an infinite cycle until the sense of worry awakens inside my chest, prompting me to deeply breathe in and lightly breathe out. This method clears my mind of superfluous notions, leaving only one thought: I do not belong here. These last several weeks felt like an eternity. I'm trapped within this facility, not even permitted to get some fresh air like a "healthy" person would. I am continuously accompanied by an adult who most likely does not understand me. They do nothing except feed me a lot and tell me that gaining weight is necessary for me. They have no sense of humour or sympathy. What they value the most is when their patient follows their instructions. For me, they are living machines who exhibit no empathy for the most vulnerable individuals. And they claim to understand me: lucky enough to be swapping shifts with others in order to return home, while I'm compelled to stay in this building for the entire time! Each guardian is slightly different, but they all share one trait: they care more about my weight than what goes on within my warped mind. Every day, I'm expected to eat six times. This is more irritating than listening to an OCD girl ask her guardian thousands of questions or seeing a depressed female sob in the restroom. And even though the amount of food I have to consume frustrates me, I refuse to give up; every mouthful I make, every sip I take, is for my family. My parents simply deserve a healthy daughter, not one who is locked up in a psychiatric clinic for months when she could be at school working. The wall of my temporary room is adorned with images of a happy family, a family that is mine, and I don't want to destroy something as valuable as a family just because I couldn't beat my eating disorder. This condition isn't worth it. I must continue to fight. For the sake of my family; for my own benefit. And, while I don't understand some of the other patients, I'm confident that they can all do the same thing: keep on fighting for the sake of their loved ones. As difficult as it is to overcome a mental illness, one can be stronger than the voice inside their head; since this voice isn't the real you! The true self is the happy person you once were, yearning to be released from the pressures that a mental illness can bring. And I know we can do this; we just have to. So I keep on eating, keep on fighting, and everytime I'm feeling down about myself, I go to my room, to the wall covered with family photos, to remind myself why I'm doing all of this in the first place. I want to be with the people I love, but I can't since I'm in this facility. The only way out of here is to eat - and I'm doing this right now. Another few weeks pass, and I do my best not to give up. I can't let myself down, especially now that I'm so close to being released. Sharing my room with someone who is working as hard as I am to get back on their feet enhances my confidence. Having a friend like them is extremely beneficial in keeping me on track. Their name is Yara - but I call them Lou. And, finally, the day of my release has arrived. Everyone congratulates me on my accomplishment, my new friends give me tight hugs, and Lou even gives me a present - a painted canvas with my name on it. "We have made this for you so you will remember us" , they tell me. "I will miss you so much." I try to stop the tears streaming down my face. I will miss you too!, I want to exclaim. I will miss you more than you'll miss me! But everything I say is “Thank you for the canvas. I really appreciate it!” With that, I leave them - it's now their turn to leave this place having accomplished something that they can be proud of. Once I step outdoors, I immediately spot them: my mother in her ivory-coloured coat, my father in his characteristic black cap, and in front of them, my precious sister carrying our dog in her arms. They look lovely together, yet their pack is incomplete. So I run towards them, a broad smile on my face. The moment I land in my mother's arms, everything is fine again. I did it! I've returned home. Our tribe is at last complete. And everything that has happened belongs in the past, where I hope it will remain in perpetuity. Two years later, I am sitting in my room in an entirely different country, at my desk, writing the story of my life. When I pull my gaze away from the screen, my attention is drawn to a colourful canvas situated on my windowsill. Guess what? It has my name on it.

Once upon a time, a man named Paddy dug in the ground to harvest his crop, and found rot. Black, putrid rot. After digging more and more, he only found more of the same. He grabbed up a handful of what was supposed to be a potato, and, after pondering for a second, he suddenly and violently threw it; a long, hard throw, further than he thought he could throw, with fierce, clear adrenaline kicking through his body. But as he looked after his hurled piece of rot, his eyes focused on the Irishman's spear to the side. The landlord's men. A miserable, merciless, loveless lot. Now. Today. Coming to his house. Dropping everything, he turned and ran, faster than he thought he could run, up the hill to his humble stone cottage. He arrived there just as the men came riding at a swift jaunty pace into the hard-packed dirt front yard. His mind was on one thing. He neither turned nor stopped his pace, but hurled himself into the house and straight to that one thing. Along with a few last coins, he grabbed that one precious item, and ran far out back and, digging with his hands in the dry soil he placed that precious thing in the ground and threw some dirt over it. Then, turning, he saw the men ram rod the stone walls of his house. Stones fell and thudded inside the cottage, and he felt his heart thud with them. Like a wild man he wanted to run and fight them all, running into the midst of them like a one-man nightmare such as they had never seen before. With a roar the thatched roof went up in flames, and deep inside him something roared with it. But before he launched himself from his locked trance, heaven's gates swung open, and with a wild rush, it let loose its tears. All was thickly veiled with gray, fast falling, drenching, pouring. Quickly he turned, and threw himself on the ground, over his precious item shallowly buried. When the heaviness dwindled into a light drizzle, he lifted himself from the ground and turned to gaze at the landlord's work. The landlord's men were gone. Tumbled stones and piled ashes dark, damp and glistening held close the earth. Sifting smoke stirred up from it, lifting softly, sweetly, sorrowfully, like a soul leaving a young body, prematurely. And he felt his soul going with it, lifting, drifting, sifting. But not dead. Yes very much alive. More alive than many a living thing. Grief struck deep into his soul, the truest grief, yet not a tear he shed. Sorrow stung his heart, yet still, he rose upward. His precious item buried, he bent and dug it up. There it lay, like a small, premature casket, a narrow wooden box painted black, as long as his arm. His soul was in there, or, at least, a prime defining feature of his soul. Though it lay in a dark box, it was not dead. In fact it was one of the greatest defiers of death. Opening the box, Paddy pulled out his fiddle.

In the molecular biology department's lab at the University of Southern Denmark, where I participated in a one-week biotechnology camp, I was doing an experiment using the PCR technique. Using this technique, I increased an amount of DNA exponentially, generating thousands of copies out of one copy of a DNA sequence. I was quite fascinated by the experiment. It didn't take my fantasy long time to start applying the technique outside of the university's walls. I started imagining how astonishing it would be if we could replicate our wealth, achievements in academia and all the goods in the world by just replicating one single segment of them. The clock suddenly rang, and one of the professors signed our attendance, indicating the end of the lab. On the way home on the train, I was thinking about the experiment, but also about the coming high school application interview of a mentee of mine, and from this my mind wandered to the whole experience of teaching her. My mentee is a young Syrian refugee living in the town where my parents and little brother now live, and I volunteer my time to help her. She is my age and she was still attending language school when I became her mentor, to help her learn Danish and prepare to get into Danish high school. On our first meeting, we had to get to know each other. She told me that she had always dreamed of studying economics and she had been a refugee in Turkey for the last three years where her parents had not been able to send her to school, and thus, she suffered from learning difficulties. She also told me about her worries of not being able to learn the Danish language and if that would possibly prevent her from attending a normal school with teenagers who share the same interest as she does and who are at the same age. At that time, I had developed mixed feelings of responsibility for and connection to her that I hadn't expected. Despite both being refugees from Syria, we were two very different people and our challenges with regards to education and learning were very different. But we were, however, both trying to find a source of hope for our futures, or as they say, a light at the end of the tunnel. Gradually, I began to realize that we had more things in common than we might have thought originally. What I really wanted to do was not just teach her Danish, I wanted to open her eyes to the possibilities in this different world, which both she and I had been thrown into. The language was a tool for this and I had that tool. I had managed to take hold of it quite quickly, but passing it on to her and others often felt like a whole set of challenges. Suddenly, everything became dark as the train passed through a tunnel along the way. I closed my eyes letting my thoughts wander deep into the Danish language, trying to find some tips that might make learning easier and more enjoyable for her. The next day, I bought a small notebook for our next meeting, and in that notebook, we wrote down all the new words she learned while reading. We had agreed together to practice them in our conversations every time we met. As her vocabulary grew, the Danish language began to acquire a distinct rhythm to my ears; a rhythm that I didn't have the chance to feel properly or to hear closely before, as my brain was absorbing the language very quickly during my first seven months in this new country. Our words were multiplying in the notebook, and as they did, our will was rising and fighting against the consequences of an illogical war that had brought both of us here. As our conversations in Danish advanced from very simple sentences to more complex thoughts and phrases, I began to sense a change in the essence of our exchanges. With each new word that my mentee added to her vocabulary, I tasted words of resilience and hope that were never present in our Arabic conversations. I began to realize that the Danish language had become not only a means of communication, but also a source of strength and resistance and hope for a better future. With this realization, I repeated each sentence, uttering the words again and again, allowing her to understand the layers of meaning within this new vocabulary. Fortified with this new language, she was rebuilding a life and lighting up the dark tunnel with her education. It was only a few days before her high school interview that our notebook was almost full of new vocabularies. Her Danish conversations had developed remarkably and her confidence in her own skills has grown as well. After my mentee passed her interview for high school successfully, I discovered that replicating our academic achievements would never have the same value as replicating DNA copies. I realized that the true value of these achievements comes only through sharing them and using them to make a difference in the lives of others.