activism

Helping

~ jjebbia ~ Leave a comment

It was difficult to read a text from my mom this morning frantically asking if my friends were safe, and not have an immediate answer. It was hard to look at pictures of festival attendees clutching the ground, even as people worked hard as ever to help each other climb fences and hide behind cars and barriers. It has been so excruciating to read the accounts, especially from a family member, who returned safely home today. Trauma will be lasting and deeply impacting of life hereafter.

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Photo by Robert Collins on Unsplash

I will never know the pain of presence, of witnessing the bloodshed, and certainly the absolute horror that is losing a family member whose life was stolen mercilessly while participating in community and enjoying art. I don’t have answers, though I know complacency and “thoughts and prayers” completely fail time and again to prevent toxic masculinity from exploding and reaping toxicity on people who are loved, who love.

As a former full-time college chaplain, I remember trying to hold a container for students when a terrible event, whether nationally recognized or personally felt (or both) fell upon them, unexpected and unwarranted. It is by the far the most challenging piece of this vocation, yet the most important. This is a daily occurrence, not once in a while. Even though the vigils and times of remembrance seem reserved for the “big” tragedies, feeling unsafe is a reality for so many students. Events like this reinforce the false notion that safe spaces exist. So as chaplains, or therapists, or listeners who are in a “helping profession,” what are we to do? We must do, not just think and pray.

For starters, we can be frank that this “problem” is multifaceted and definitely a dire product of racism, white supremacy, masculinity. I cannot advise anyone to “keep living” or “enjoy life” despite the fear, even though many students recognize that doing just that is a form of resistance. Of course, how to live one’s best life can only be defined by the individual. Being honest, uncomfortable and vulnerable, especially in how we uphold a culture of violence, allows students to witness this behavior and model it. Frankly, I often found myself following their lead as some of the most effective leaders and activists not only on campus, but in the country. An excruciating tragedy requires no legitimizing, but demands authentic admission of shortcomings and failure.

One such amazing student leader recently published an honest, raw and informative blog on the Interfaith Youth Core’s writing platform Inter and I firmly believe it deserves a good slow read from those of us “helpers,” whatever our particular title. She names the work young leaders of faith continue to do often without recognition. Martha writes,

Faced with another national tragedy, with more than 50 people dead and 500 people injured, millennials of faith are showing up for values-based policies and standing firm for the truth that we can have movements that don’t discriminate. We can use our solidarity to overcome division and heal after trauma. We can keep our communities safe without the use of fear and bigotry. And we will do so, together.

Read Martha’s blog here. She writes from experience and a deep passion for interfaith activism and movements. Healing, like living, is another act of much needed resistance and examination.

 

 

 

Numb

~ jjebbia ~ 1 Comment

First. I had surgery today. There is a cyst that’s been bothering me on my lip for the past three months and after several trips to dentists and dermatologists, I decided it was time to see an oral surgeon. The waiting room reminded me of a 1970’s office with blue plastic furniture and yellowed blinds. I sat with my hands folded in the patient chair while the surgeon explained the procedure and the risks (discomfort was the biggest… so you can tell this was a mild surgery). Then I prepared myself for the novocaine, the only part that really terrifies me about medical procedures. The feeling that comes with the initial shot is a loss of feeling, to eliminate the potential pain we might experience. This sensation is called “numb.”

PC: Jon Tyson
Today of course is the 16th anniversary of the attacks on September 11, 2001. Last year on this day, I was frantically sharing the media pieces that the Revolutionary Love team had put together in honor of the 15 year mark. 15 felt like a big milestone, perhaps because 5-year increments do, perhaps because the impending election trumpeted hateful rhetoric reminiscent of the days and months and years after the attacks. But this year as I sat dreading the needle that would make my whole face feel nothing, I wondered if we as a nation have shifted to a kind of numbness after this pivotal moment in history. 

“No,” I quickly decided. There may be fewer media pieces and ceremonies, but the calls to action for help in hurricane relief and fighting white supremacy are not so different than calls to affirm our Muslim neighbors and to practice compassion. Further and perhaps more importantly, as impactful as a single moment can be, sixteen years later we should not ignore the effects this days has had on every day following. Not to mention the deep-seeded racism and xenophobia the attacks helped to expose to those oblivious. 

This evening I met the new Revolutionary Love Project team and I feel like I did last year on our first team call. Recognizing that we have our work cut out, I feel grateful that we may be angry and scared, but we still believe in our message. That is not “numbness.” That is genuine, blessed feeling. 

Labor

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It’s the end of Labor Day Weekend, traditionally a transitional weekend. Even though the temperature this past week in Los Angeles has climbed over 100 every day, I admit that pumpkins and apples have been appearing in my feeds and emails. Fall is near. Many of us live according to an academic calendar, which means we have just started a new school year (if you’re on the quarter system, we’ve got a few more weeks!). Excitement and anxiety and anticipation abound, and Tuesday morning traffic has returned to ever freeway in southern California in full force.

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Photo by Mariano Rossi on Unsplash

I just finished reading Diane Guerrero’s In the Country We Love yesterday. In case her name isn’t immediately familiar, Guerrero plays Maritza in the Netflix series Orange is the New Black and Lina on Jane the Virgin. She also happens to be a best-selling memoirist. Her book details the story of growing up in Boston in a family of Colombian immigrants, she the only US-born member. Since everyone should read this book I won’t give everything away, but the crux of the story is the scene in which Guerrero returns home from school at age 14 and finds her parents have been taken by ICE. Within weeks, they are both deported back to Columbia, and Guerrero is left totally alone as a new high school freshman.

With the decision to end DACA confirmed this week, Guerrero’s book feels more than relevant, it should be a textbook read for all of us. As many of us enjoyed a day free from labor yesterday, at least in a formal sense, I thought about Guerrero’s daily struggle with a different, invisible kind of labor- emotional labor. Her situation forces her to grow up years beyond emotionally in a matter of days. The emotional struggle translates to many physical issues, and an especially chilling scene shook me to my core. The thing about her story is that 800,000 DACA-mented folx and other undocumented people in the United States struggle through a similar narrative every day.

This emotional labor often takes a much larger toll than many realize. For a few years I have sought out and listened to stories of immigrants in the United States, their statuses mixed. It seemed like the best way to engage. This will never make me understand the struggle, mind you. The stories I heard made me consider mindless choices I make every single day, like booking a flight and putting my address, applying for a part-time job, or even walking in public places. The emotional labor of these decisions for undocumented folx hangs in the air every day, until their meaning is internalized. Unknown. Unrecognized. Unwanted. The labor it takes to live a full life despite these internalized attitudes is one that does not allow a day off.

As the season of new school years pushes off the dock, I think my emotional labor should involve more listening and awareness around the internalized attitudes that create roadblocks. My roadblock this week comes from deep-seeded anger. It’s an anger that can only prove productive if it drives me to keep working.

Cake, Honesty, and The Best

~ jjebbia ~ 1 Comment

How do you live your best life?

This question. It’s been plaguing me for months! I’ve written a fair amount about joy as an act of resistance lately, because my hope is to sustain myself (and y’all, dear readers) for the long road ahead. There’s a great Buzzfeed listicle that instructs “go the F*** to bed,” which I will never oppose. It’s not easy to find joy in trying times, and further, it’s easy to feel guilty about experiencing happy emotions when so many suffer.

I’ve been causing myself an inordinate amount of suffering in the way that I see my body and what I put in it and ask it to do, desperately striving to maintain control over food and exercise. My excuse has been, “I have so many clothes. I want to fit in to them.” One of the times in my life I felt I was living best was during my senior year of college. I had joined a gym downtown primarily because they offered quick 15-minute workouts, and what college student doesn’t want to save time? After a few months of working out there 4-5 times a week, they hired me to train other members. I loved the attitude of Educogym, the “forget everything you know about dieting and eat FAT for breakfast” message. This isn’t a commercial, though I definitely wrote several glowing reviews online. The truth is, I was living my best then because I was living in the present glory of gratitude for who I was, what my body gave me, and the image I held of myself as a person in the world. It has not always been the case that I have been so gentle and accepting.

Acceptance proves difficult when you tell yourself “you’ve done it before, why can’t you do it now?” For the past few months and even years, I have experienced a yo-yo sensation between “eating clean” and “omg cake, pinterest, ALL THE BAKES!” The experience meets with emotions of longing, on the one hand, and then guilt on the other. How do we have our cake, eat it, and feel good about it?

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Photo by Lance Anderson on Unsplash

This piece isn’t mean to police any kind of diet, lifestyle, calorie count, or exercise regimen at all, in fact I want to return to the question of living our best lives by tweaking the prompt. How do we live our most honest lives? It moved me that perhaps this yo-yo effect is leading me to think about a deeper need, one of balancing health and a pursuit of freedom. I needed to be honest with myself about my own limitations and abilities to enjoy the present for where I am. So I baked a giant brownie torte, picked five dresses that cut off circulation in my arms, and folded them neatly to donate.

It’s important to live our most honest lives because we face our deepest convictions. Performative actions, to impress, to prove, to hide, harm everyone involved. We have our cake, eat it, and embrace it when there is harmony in value and action.

 

 

 

Lightning Storm

~ jjebbia ~ Leave a comment

Last night I watched a fantastic Incubus show right underneath a glorious and terrifying lightning storm. I drove 300 miles to Phoenix from San Diego yesterday morning, through the desert, along the steel wall that separates Baja California and Sonora from the United States. Border patrol stopped me, asked to search my trunk, and I said “no.” The agent listened. I went on my way unharmed.

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Photo by David Moum on Unsplash

2000 miles away, some of my greatest heroes stood arm in arm facing men with riot gear and automatic weapons. They weren’t police. These heroes are the clergy of our time. They’re pastors and preachers. Scholar activists. I admired a picture of them standing linked together, singing and praying while just feet from them violence erupted and a young woman lost her life as a terrorist plowed his car into the crowd. Their prayers and songs are heard. They were echoed this morning in churches around the country, and will be this week in many forms of sacred space.
I’ve found such hope in the writings and teachings of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. He was an activist, exiled from his home country and now helps people from all nations understand that Buddhist practice requires us to recognize we are all connected. Our suffering is bound up together, and thus we must show up and care for each other.
Sometimes it feels as though my faith has told me not to get attached to the fight for justice. At the root this teaching points to attachment as the core of suffering, and I believe this to be true. But turning off the thirst to learn and simply exist ignorant from the real suffering in my country at this moment does not lead any closer to Nirvana, it only lulls me into false notions of self-care as the only necessary form of practice. We come to the cushion to find awareness of ourselves, and this is called a “practice,” not “our life.”

Because the world is waiting for us when our sit is over. Sitting helps us to be mindful in the action, to remain unattached to outcomes but stand hopeful that love will prevail.
I’m proud of the religious and spiritual leaders for recognizing that they have voices. I was thinking today about the Civil Rights Movement and subsequently the internment of 120,000 Japanese immigrants and American born citizens, two moments that feel both far in time and close in context. We might read about the leaders who ushered change and progress in textbooks, or hang pictures in our offices years from now. But they show us a great example of remaining present in this moment, armed with the texts and words of timeless prophets and teachers, focused on saving lives today.
The lighting storm terrified me. It lit up the sky as if we sat trapped in an electric glass bubble, and the thunder boomed directly on top of us. I kept looking to my right to see if I could run for it. The band had left the stage, and I wanted to book it to my car. But I stayed in my seat, feeling safer among the crowd. The cheers and shouts around me reminded me I wasn’t alone, even if I was terrified. We are not alone in this fight, we have arms to link and songs to harmonize. I am grateful for every pulpit that spoke truth today, especially to call us in.

Perfect is poison

~ jjebbia ~ Leave a comment

I have been striving for perfection and decided it needs to stop.

Aiming to do a good/great/really awesome job at something is not a bad thing to do, but there comes a point when one claps the dust off their hands, tilts their head to admire the arduous work just finished, and moves on. Perfectionism prevents this- we start to dwell and not live in the present. There’s that one little smudge that if corrected, will make us feel satisfied. But there is always another smudge. 
 I learned this week that perfectionism does something else dangerous too: it allows us in our own mind to separate ourselves from other beings and things in the world. I might say “At least I’ve done more x than so and so, or got a better grade than…” But at the core of my humanness, I am not better than anyone, anything. At the beginning of time, I was one with the exact only mass that existed and there was no such thing as difference.

Cavities are no fun, we can probably all agree to this statement. On Thursday morning, I went to get my first one drilled and filled. I am almost 30 years old. When my dentist called to tell me what needed to be done, I hung up the phone and cried. “You’ve ruined it,” I heard myself say. “Your teeth are no longer perfect.” To make matters worse, I started naming all the people I knew who had cavities so I wouldn’t feel alone. 

PC: Kazuend

Of course my teeth were never perfect. For the first time, I had actual decay bad enough that this tooth transformed into a rotting mass. Change is constant, especially in our bodies. I spent the rest of the day moping because the right side of my face felt numb and because I allowed the feelings of worthlessness and failure to permeate- I listened to them, instead of simply hearing them and letting them go. Then on Friday, Google posted something really cool on their front page.

I clicked the link and read about the NAACP Silent Parade on 5th Avenue 100 years ago to demand federal action over the killing of innocent black men. 100 years ago was 1917- the same year Congress signed the immigration bill that barred immigration from the Asia-Pacific region, and marked the beginning of the United States’ retreat into isolationism. Doesn’t this sound almost exactly like our country at this very moment? In 2017? Have all our efforts led us to the exact same place in time- one in which folx feel unheard, unseen and unloved? 

As I read about the 10,000 protestors who marched through the city, wearing uniform white, I found no reassurance or comfort in the fact that we are fighting the same fight with different props and technologies. This is why seeking separation is harmful. I once heard a friend who, when discussing the systems of oppression in our society, argued that “we MUST have made some progress. It’s 50 years later!” 

Seeking to separate myself, even in merit or achievement, upholds this false notion that progress must come with the passage of time. That is not a requirement. I think St necessary to lessen the separation I feel from the people around me, and even the people who marched 100 years ago because we cannot write off their experience as something else. I am not perfect, the smudge will remain. 

 

Happy Birthday!

~ jjebbia ~ Leave a comment

The Practivist is two this week, so I had grand plans to make a cake to celebrate. I also got donuts and baked cookies, because go big or go home. Well, this is how the cake turned out:

S’mores cake with graham cracker and chocolate cake layers, fudge sauce, marshmallow icing and graham cracker crumble

My mom saw it first. I got a text saying “emergency” while reading in my room, and rushed downstairs to find her laughing. “What!” I looked at her expecting something terrible, but she pointed to the cake. The marshmallow frosting was too slippery. “Geez, you scared me!” We both laughed very hard. That’s exactly what this blog is about, I realized. Finding joy in the imperfect, the disastrous. The cake tasted great, by the way. Appearances aren’t everything.

A year ago, I attended the Beyond Walls Spiritual Writing retreat in Gambier, Ohio. 100 religious leaders (of sorts) stayed in the Kenyon College dorms and wrote op-eds, essays, religious commentaries, and stories. It was at that retreat that I committed to posting a blog every week, and I’m happy to share that I made it! 52 posts later, my writing feels more natural. Every week offered an opportunity to reflect on this idea of staying grounded in the daily struggle, whether it was personal or worldly (often both). Since last July, I joined a memoir writing group, started working for an amazing project (the Revolutionary Love Project, founded by Sikh-American activist and filmmaker Valarie Kaur- also a personal hero), and ran a marathon. I quit my job. I got accepted to my dream PhD program in religious studies at Stanford and moved back to California. I finished cataloguing my blessed collection of books, many of which came from my grandmother’s house when she passed away. My sister graduated from medical school and started her residency at home. For the first time in over six years, my family is all in one place.

Though my writing has certainly rambled down different paths, I believe this blog remains true to my original idea of exploring how we, as human beings, demand resilience in ourselves. Suffering grounds me in my religious beliefs because all humans experience it. Yet, we are capable of countering it, and even ending it in certain circumstances. This year I often found that joy presented itself in a form of self-allowance. When we realize we are deserving of the life we are given, the gifts of said life present themselves. I’ll never forget when Valarie spoke to our group of fellows on the phone after the election and she told us we deserved joy especially in a time such as this. “We will never let them take it away,” she said.

My students often gifted me opportunities to learn, which I loved and cherished. I had no idea that my job involved so much learning, often in times I was supposed to be the teacher or coach. I feel much better about admitting my mistakes, even when they have caused someone I love to hurt. Guilt still plagues me, but I am able to name it and even let it go more easily sometimes.

Not every blog post was easy to write, and definitely not all of them turned out the way I envisioned. Some of them make me cringe reading them back, but I’ve decided to leave them as they are to trace the journey and accept the imperfection of where I was when I completed them. Authors speak often about the trajectory of their work and how much their earlier writing influences their current projects because the necessity of reflection and knowing oneself through process makes us better writers.

It’s difficult to imagine a year from now because as life has taught me, plans often meander or even take a sharp turn away from an original intention. That’s why this blog has been so important to me, because the friends and others who have read even one posting and commented or messaged me saying, “I identity with this” have made it worth it to stay up late or carve out time (when I really didn’t have it) to keep going. I plan to keep writing and learning and making mistakes. Here’s to another year and maybe even another cake that resembles the leaning tower of frosting.

Freedom

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Today is a day to celebrate.

…But what are we celebrating? I’ve been thinking about that question all week as the flags have come out, the barbecue grill tops scraped off, red white and blue cupcakes to car decals .

My not so famous (yet) cauliflower “potato” salad

This past May I got a unique opportunity to drive across the country on the way home from Boston to LA. As you can imagine, I saw plenty of landscapes and moreover, significantly distinct ways of life from farms to fabulous mansions across the street from national art museums. The trip felt like a giant learning expedition, helping me understand just slightly better what “divided” means in our country. Maybe the one thing each place had in common was that it rained. And fast food. I cannot soften how apparent it is that we are not a unified nation, because that would gloss over so many struggles and injustices I saw right outside the car door window.

Today is a day to celebrate, not despite these struggles, but because of them. Sojourner Truth, a suffragette and influential fighter for women’s rights during and after slavery, once said: “I will not allow the light of my life to be determined by the darkness around me.” Joy is an act of resistance. We all agree on this as we fight for justice, a path often surrounded by strife and mourning and wondering when, how, what.

I was in Las Vegas this past weekend with one of my best friends from USC and her sister. We sat around a shisha pipe (my request) as I fired off life questions. “What is your greatest fear? What are you most proud of? Who is someone you let go of too soon? What is one thing you want to see for yourself in five years?” I don’t remember exactly which question we began discussing, but our parents came up as a subject of both respect and recognition of imperfection. We all confessed that one thing our parents have given us is a safety net: an ability to take risks and even make pretty terrible mistakes without letting us fall completely to our demise. Maybe it’s money, maybe a place to stay, maybe simply a listening ear, but we could not downplay the sacrifices of our parents and grandparents who worked and still work to give us what this country is supposed to provide for everyone: freedom.

Freedom is a big word, and as someone who practices Buddhism most humbly and often in a state of questioning, I think about freedom from suffering as a goal for which to strive. Help to free others from suffering,  free my own mind of craving and desire that causes suffering. Today I firmly believe we are celebrating the people who have risked their own suffering to free others from it. Immigrants who settled here 50 years ago or yesterday to transform their rootedness into the branches for their children and grandchildren. Women who persist, nevertheless. Queer folx who selflessly write and speak and talk to the people around them and the world to educate us, even though that is exhausting and by no means a requirement of them or their bodies. People of color who tear down “normal” behavior, speech, culture, bound up in whiteness. Dreamers, teachers, the friends who gently push us to think about how our words and actions affect everyone around us, sometimes in causing pain. These are the people who take on greater binds of suffering every day, under the star-spangled banner,  believing we can be better.

These are the people who fight to bring joy, making the fight worth it. Today as I am blessed to have dinner with my family around a nourishing meal, I am grateful for the unheard and unseen who work tirelessly without an ounce of recognition except the unflagging hope for all of us.

A Fractured Vision

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Taking a 6 am bus is pretty committed. Or silly. I’m not totally sure which. Anyway, at 6 am our bus left Boston for NYC, so I could make it in time for the Revolutionary Love Conference at Middle Collegiate Church. I was looking forward to this gathering for several reasons, including getting to meet the Revolutionary Love Fellows for the first time in person, hearing from many of my activist and organizer heroes, and finally getting the chance to visit Middle Church. The conference focused on racial justice and specifically, how we might make love a public ethic in a time of great division.


As more speakers took the stage- Valarie Kaur, Van Jones, Brian Maclaren, Dr. Eboni Marshall Turman, Dr. Traci West- the crowd filling the sanctuary listened and learned, cheered and encouraged. I felt myself experiencing a sense of joy and belonging that I haven’t for a long time. This is not to say that the content of every speaker’s message was uplifting- in fact, they shared some downright despairing stories and facts. The urgency to do this work together- the work of intersectional racial justice- is not at all overhyped. Yet the authenticity of each person on the stage inspired me to believe I can do the work without knowing all the answers. Perhaps without knowing any answers at all.


During one of the first panels, Anurag Gupta challenged us to imagine a world without racial bias. Gupta is the CEO of Be More America, an organization that trains leaders to examine and let go of unconscious bias.

“Close your eyes,” he asked us. “Imagine what this world would look like.”

I have to admit something- this was an extremely difficult exercise for me. I imagined the big loud streets right outside the church I sat in, in the middle of New York City. If you’ve ever walked down 2nd Avenue on the Lower East Side, you know the cliches are true. There aren’t many places you can smoke hookah at bar owned by an Egyptian man that sits next to world-famous Japanese restaurant on one side and a Halal Indian market on the other. You can meet one million kinds of people in New York City- and yet, this romantic picture does not do justice to the injustice. It would be so easy to sing the praises of diversity without recognizing the bias, the racism, the bigotry. I couldn’t fully imagine a world without the bias, which both scared me and then, empowered me.

One thing I know for sure is that eliminating bias cannot eliminate our differences, any single one. The danger of creating a more similar society is far worse than one in which people must grapple with particularities. As the conference carried on, I realized each person’s vision for fighting racism and bias is not the same- in fact, some of the ideas shared vehemently disagreed with others spoken.

So perhaps the question “what does the world without bias look like” is better asked, “what does A world without bias look like,” recognizing that even the vision must fracture. As Becky Bond and Zack Exley write in Rules for Revolutionaries, “the revolution isn’t handed to us on a silver platter.” We are inventing the mechanism as we build it. The important thing is not to agree completely, but to utilize the variety of gifts we hold to work toward the vision. We learn along the way.

The Ideal is Possible

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Today I did something really cool- I spoke on air about my work with the Revolutionary Love Project for L2O, a platform that organizes online communities. We talked about what Revolutionary Love means from a Buddhist perspective, how we practice in our own contexts, and most importantly, what it means to stand in love with our opponents.

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PC: Jeremy Bishop

I really enjoyed thinking critically about these questions, especially when it came to calling on wisdom from faith traditions and sacred texts. I realized as I was talking that much of my faith comes from stories and written wisdom- stories take us from a place of wonder or discomfort to a new idea. They often involve learning. I feel most connected to my own practice when I think about stories of the Buddha, and the stories tucked away in the Zhuangzi and Laozi. Whether or not they are factually true, I think these stories reveal the essence of what kind of people we hope to be. They hint at values and ethics. We walk with the protagonists to learn lessons.

At the end of the interview, Sara from L2O asked, “What does an ideal world with Revolutionary Love look like?” I admit I was rolling along through the other questions, having practiced my elevator pitch several times before. The Fourth Precept of Engaged Buddhism tells us not to turn a blind eye to suffering. We must practice knowing our own innate goodness in order to know that of others. I have a sizable story bank that allows me to illustrate what I believe quite often.

This question forced me to think about my end goal in this work. What is it all about? I know that writing and reading and dialoguing give me life, especially on the topics of faith and social justice, but to what end? I admit: I don’t know what “the ideal” is.

Pause for a second. One of the ways I ground myself in love is recognizing that everyone suffers. My job is to help alleviate that suffering- but not the reality that suffering is the way of this world. I think it’s important to acknowledge that everyone holds pain and fear. I believe further that it’s important for us to sit with it for a while. Running away only further embeds these harmful emotions into our bodies and minds. So an ideal world is not one free from suffering necessarily, but one in which the suffering translates to discomfort. When we sit in a place of tension and discomfort, we are learning. When others share with us that we contribute to their discomfort, we learn how to alleviate that. I found myself saying out loud that a world grounded in Revolutionary Love isn’t one that is absent of sadness. Instead, it is one where every emotion has a purpose, and every person sees relationship as divine. It is one in which fear drives us to build bridges, not retreat.

And finally, I turned to my old friend gratitude. Gratitude for me is the acceptance that we may not have fully realized a goal or gotten exactly what we wanted, but we acknowledge that we are better off having met someone, experienced something, learned something. A world grounded in Revolutionary Love is one in which gratitude abounds. I must say, I feel very grateful to have gotten this opportunity today.