On Resilience

My dear friend,

The candle is melting slower tonight, gathering soft and uneven at its base — a quiet reminder that even light depends on something giving way. Tonight I want to write to you about resilience.

A friend once told me about an exercise she did at a retreat. They were asked to sit quietly and look at a tree, to simply observe it and see what it could teach them. She said it was one of the most grounding and joyful moments of her life. I think I am doing something similar tonight. The candle is my tree. I sit here, watching it glow and change, letting its quiet persistence teach me about balance, endurance, and the cost of staying lit.

It has been a quiet day. I spent time reading, walking, and reconnecting with myself. The kind of day that feels small on the outside but deep on the inside. A day that reminds you how easily we can lose touch with our own thoughts when the world moves too fast. Now, as I sit here with this small light and the sound of my own breath, I keep thinking about strength, how it is never free, how every act of endurance carries a quiet cost.

I must be honest with you, my friend. I am tired. Not in the way that sleep can fix, but in the way that life sometimes asks too much from the same part of the soul. The word resilience has followed me for years. It appears in every document, every strategy, every meeting and every project. I have seen it written on whiteboards, whispered in briefings, printed on banners above tents where people had lost almost everything. Everyone speaks about resilience. Few understand what it truly feels like.

There is a difference between knowing the language of resilience and living it. You can write about it, teach it, or design projects around it and still not understand it. Because resilience is not about optimism. It is about surviving long enough for hope to return.

If I were to name one of my greatest strengths, it would be resilience. Over the years, I have come to see that what I have truly learned in my journey in life is not how to avoid the unexpected, but how to face it when it comes, whether in my personal life or in my professional path.

Today, I want to tell you a story. It is one I have shared with some of my friends recently, hoping it might inspire them as it continues to inspire me. It is about people I met during my years overseas, people whose quiet strength reminded me what resilience really looks like.

This story takes place in northern Nigeria, in what we call a “hard-to-reach” area. It is a place you can only access by helicopter because the roads are unsafe. Armed attacks happen often, and the villages once full of life have turned into quiet, displaced ghost towns.

I took a helicopter with one of my Nigerian colleagues on what we called a round trip. We could not stay overnight where we were going. The area was high risk, marked in red on our maps, classified as a “no-go” zone. Armed attacks were frequent, and the roads were unsafe. The only way in was by air. We went to check on the team, meet them face-to-face, and see the work done.

After landing, we drove to the office, a small mud house that served as the team’s base. It had a single room, a few plastic chairs, and handwritten notes taped to the wall. The team gathered there each morning before heading to the camp to work on shelter, water, sanitation, and food distribution. Despite the heat, the dust and the weight of their reality, they were full of energy. We spoke for a while, shared updates, laughed, and then went together to the camp.

On the way there, something caught my eye. Along the road, I saw a group of women sitting far apart from one another, each surrounded by small hills of stones. At first, I thought they were resting. Then I noticed the rhythm of their arms. I wanted to stop, but we had a full schedule. I told myself I would ask about it later.

We finished our work at the camp in the early afternoon. As the curfew approached, we began driving back to the helicopter site. The sun was dropping low, and the air had turned a deep orange. As we passed the same road, I saw the women again. Still there. Still working. The same slow rhythm of arms rising and falling.

I asked my colleague what they were doing. “Working,” he said simply. “What kind of work?” I asked. “Stone crushing,” he replied.

I asked him to stop the car. The driver nodded and pulled to the side. I wanted to speak to them.

We could not drive close because of the uneven ground, so I got out of the car and began to walk. The air was heavy with dust, and every step crunched softly beneath my boots. The closer I came, the clearer the sound became—a slow, steady rhythm of metal striking stone.

She was sitting on the ground, one woman among many, surrounded by small piles of rock. Her hands were dry and cracked, covered with a thin layer of white dust. A small, worn hammer lay beside her, its handle darkened from years of use. She lifted it again and again, each strike deliberate, each breath heavy. The sound echoed across the empty field, mixing with the wind and the heat.

I greeted her in the local language, one of the few words I had learned. She gave me a faint smile but did not stop working. My colleague came closer to translate as I asked what she was doing.

She looked up at me, squinting against the sun, and said a few quiet words. My colleague translated softly, “She says she is breaking the stones to sell them. It is the only income here.”

I looked around. Dozens of women sat scattered across the field, each surrounded by her own small hills of crushed stones. I pointed at one of the piles and asked, “How much does she get for this?”

The translator asked in her language. She replied without looking up. “Less than a hundred,” he told me.

I frowned. “A hundred what?”

“Naira,” he said.

I paused. Less than a dollar. A full day of crushing stones under the heat for less than a dollar.

I stared at the pile again. It wasn’t just a heap of broken rock. It was a day of her life, a day spent under the sun turning pain into something she could sell.

I asked, quietly, “Who buys them?”

“Traders,” the translator said after she answered. “They come sometimes and take the stones to the town. But not every day. They wait.”

I looked at her again. Her hands trembled slightly from the weight of the hammer. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand, leaving a streak of dust across her face. Then she picked up another rock. The hammer seemed small in her grip, but she held it like something sacred.

I felt a rush of emotions I couldn’t name—sadness, anger, respect. The heat pressed against my skin, the dust filled my lungs, and the noise of the hammers grew louder in my ears. I wanted to say something. Something kind, something comforting. But every word that came to mind felt smaller than the truth of what I was seeing.

I looked at my colleague. He didn’t speak either. We both stood still, listening to the steady rhythm of the hammers. The sound was soft but endless. The sound of endurance. The sound of time itself.

She looked up once more and gave me a small, polite smile before turning back to her work.

As I walked back to the car, I looked around at the others, each woman lost in her own rhythm, each surrounded by small golden hills of stone. The sun was sinking lower, washing everything in amber light. When the car started moving towards the airstrip, the sound of hammers faded slowly behind us.

When the helicopter took off, I looked out the small window. From above, the women became tiny dots scattered across the land. The piles of stones looked like scars carved into the earth. I watched until they disappeared into the distance, until the dust swallowed them completely.

That image has stayed with me ever since, the rhythm of their hands, the sound of stones breaking, the quiet dignity in their faces. I have told this story many times, trying to describe what I saw, but words never seem to carry the full weight. The heat does not come through. The silence. The dust. The pain. The strength. The sorrow.

Those women taught me more about resilience than any handbook or workshop ever could. They were not waiting for hope to arrive. They were creating it, one strike at a time.

When I think of resilience now, I see their faces. But I also see so many others. The men who stayed to rebuild roads that had been destroyed a hundred times. The teachers who walked through checkpoints just to keep a classroom open. The mothers who carried water for miles through dust and rain. The children who laughed inside tents and turned survival into play. The colleagues who led with courage in places that demanded more than they had to give.

My friend, as I feel the warmth of this candle beside me tonight, I can only say this: resilience is not the fire itself. It is the decision to keep striking the match. It is not strength without struggle. It is grace that refuses to break.

Resilience is what we build when we stand again, when we choose kindness over despair, when we find meaning even in loss. It is the echo of every hand that lifted a stone, every teacher who stayed, every team that refused to give up.

Until tomorrow, my friend, keep your heart steady and your hope alive. The wax may melt, but the light endures.

With strength and calm,

Ali Al Mokdad