We all face challenges and change, falls and failure. Now more than ever, resilience is crucial to thriving in our world. In this issue of KidSpirit, young contributors plumb the depths of their experiences to explore the strength of the human spirit. Join them on their quest to understand what lies behind our drive to persevere, and be inspired to discover your own inner strength. 

1. Vanita Sharma takes on the Editorial Board’s Big Question, “Why Are We Resilient?” Read her response and contemplate the challenges you’ve faced in your life. Can you recall a time you encountered a setback? How did it make you feel? Did you try again to achieve your goal? Why or why not? Would you do anything differently now? Write down 3 pieces of advice you would share with someone facing the same obstacle for the first time. Can any of these insights help you the next time something doesn’t go as planned? 

2. In her Awesome Moments article “Disorder or Cure,” Sophia Yin describes how a physical illness unexpectedly taught her to be mentally stronger. Ultimately, she finds that her greatest weakness was a failure to be true to herself, and resolves to pay more attention to her own passions, instead of her peers’ opinions. What are some pursuits or hobbies that are most important to you? Think of 5 activities that you truly enjoy. How does each of them make you feel? Do you make time for all of them? Why or why not? Come together as a group and pool your lists. What can you learn from the variety of interests represented? How do you think this variety contributes to your community?

3. “Each time the child peered / Darkness met his gaze / Daring him to venture further / He scrambled backwards…” Did you ever feel terror at the thought of monsters living under your bed? Was there a time when being alone in the dark gave you the creeps? Read Haemaru Chung’s poem “The Abyss Under the Bed” and try to remember your earliest fear. Did you ever overcome it? How? Then, think of something you are afraid of now. Are there any similarities between your childhood worry and your current one? Do you think there are any parallels in how you can face and move past them? 

4. Nick Stuart, acclaimed filmmaker, president of Odyssey Networks, and this issue’s PerSpectives author, has traveled all over the world interviewing people who have faced incredible hardship. As he writes in his article “Resilience,” he has been inspired by individuals from all walks of life who continue to work towards love and justice in the face of pain and tragedy. Is there someone in your life who embodies strength and perseverance? Why do you consider them an example of resilience? How do you think they cultivate inner strength?  

Resilience Group Guide

Landing on my high school’s junior varsity tennis team for the third time in a row was devastating.

After spending hours, even years, vying for a position on varsity while watching my sister rise up through the ranks and observing my peers compete in the official leagues, I was desperate to make the team. I am not usually superstitious, but I used to blow a wish on every eyelash that I found to help me get onto the team.

After getting rejected I wanted to quit. I stopped believing that I was good enough for any team—consistently failing to reach my goal for three years had to mean something. My coaches kept telling me that I had potential, but I wasn’t mentally confident in my game anymore.

After a while, though, I realized that only I could control how much this disappointment affected me. I could use the loss as  motivation to work harder and come back stronger next year, or I could let it destroy my confidence. Despite my frustrations, I wasn’t ready to throw away three years of work towards my goals. After a few mental battles on the court, I pushed my limits in JV, acknowledging that I should make the most of the position I was in. When I accepted my initial disappointment, I was able to enjoy my season and come back stronger.

The key to overcoming defeat is resilience: the ability to recover from setbacks, adapt well to change, and continue on in the face of adversity. Resilience is the power to pick yourself up when it seems impossible, find a new path, and make the best of undesired circumstances. Our environment has a large influence on our mental and physical ability to handle hardships. We call this circumstantial resilience. Any additional strength we build is dependent on how willing we are to step out of our comfort zone.

We have limited control over the way our environment shapes our circumstantial resilience. We each face unique situations: it is difficult to compare the resilience of a child born on the street to that of an heir to a corporate empire.  It is possible that a child who experiences a difficult childhood develops, by necessity, a greater ability to face and survive hardships.

Traumatic events like the loss of a loved one, divorce, abuse, or incarceration may provoke another kind of circumstantial resilience. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina killed 1,245 people and flooded 80% of New Orleans. Almost four-fifths of the population was evacuated and there was massive destruction of property. Yet the city survived, as its government and people came together and rebuilt the city and their lives. New Orleans bounced back, joining the 100 Resilient Cities program, designated to spread urban resilience, or the “capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and grow no matter what kind of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience.”

The ability to move on and adapt to new circumstances is a key factor of success—starting from the simple evolutionary concept of survival of the fittest. No one is born immune to all adversities and obstacles, but successful people have acclimated themselves to life’s challenges. We have persisted through climate change, war, strife, pollution, depression, illness, hurricanes, and tsunamis, and we continue to grow and progress.

While I was taking notes for my U..S history class the other day, I paused in the middle of a section about the civil rights movement in the 1960s. The African American struggle for justice was an especially meaningful example of resilience to me. African Americans, who have been fighting for their rights since slaves were first brought to this country in 1619, have persevered through countless setbacks. When Martin Luther King, Jr., and other leaders advocated for peaceful protests, they were repressed, even murdered. That defeat didn’t stop the community from standing up again. Why did they keep fighting? Because they knew they had more worth than what society gave to them.

The willpower of the African American movement inspired me to reconsider my perspective on the roadblocks in front of me. I realized that an obstacle is only as big as I make it. Not making the varsity tennis team may have seemed like the end of my high school athletic career at first, but once the shock settled in, I saw the obstacle as a new strength to develop.

Aligning my foot with the base line, I got ready to serve out the match and finish the season strong. I felt more proud of myself at this moment than I had ever felt in my tennis career, because I knew that my victory symbolized overcoming one of the most painful struggles of my high school experience. I had learned to believe in myself, to be resilient.

In a KidSpirit Big Question article, teen writer Vanita Sharma explores why we persevere and show resilience when faced with setbacks, difficulties, or loss.

Why Are We Resilient?

“It’s no use to go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” -Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

The entrance to Upper Upper Thrombosis is small and concealed. If you aren’t looking for it, if you don’t already know where it is, you’ll likely miss it. Jack found it a while ago, and eagerly showed it to the rest of us. It technically isn’t a trail, but we don’t really care. It’s generally untouched, leaving plenty of snow for our skis to find purchase on the slick ground.

It's an ordinary Saturday, and Abby and I join the rest of the group after slipping off the Rangeley Double. We take off immediately, laughing as Mitch, Jack, Patrick, Fiona, and Mark scramble to catch up. I bounce happily over the soft moguls, going up and down, up and down.

Kshhh. A shower of wet snow sprays from my skis when I stop at the small opening in the trees. I almost missed it, all wrapped up in the joy of the moment. Abby comes next, then Mark, Jack, Fiona, Patrick, and finally Mitch, who sends up a huge shower of snow that rains down on us all. There's a general uproar of protest, and then we're laughing, and I wipe the wet snow from my goggles.

“Alright!” shouts Mark, “Let’s go!”

I push off, desperate to be first, to be able to bounce through the trees before any of the rest of them.

The entrance to Upper Upper Thrombosis is tight. You have to give the person in front of you space, and you need to turn at just the right times to get in. When you do, it spreads out slowly, the trees opening up to let you in, like the wide grin of an old friend.

I can’t help it. I grin too. And then I'm off, curling through the trees, carving my skis in happy patterns, a song (“On Top of the World” by Imagine Dragons) stuck in my head.

I stop about halfway through to wait for everyone else. I like to go fast, maybe too fast on occasion, so I have to wait for a bit, watching the bright blues and reds  of my friends swerve through the brown and white landscape. This time it's Mark first, Abby in hot pursuit. Then comes Jack, after jumping off a rather large rock, as Jack likes to do. Then Fiona and Mitch, who are happy to appreciate the turns and trees without jumps and speed. Finally, Patrick comes to a stop. He is often last, though not for lack of speed.

I smile up at my people, my friends, my Saddlebackians, and then I turn and take off once more down the mountain I love.

That’s it. It’s a happy story. No one got hurt that day, no one got lost, no one had a meltdown, no one questioned anybody’s friendship. So why am I telling you about it? I’m supposed to be talking about some terrible thing that I had to get over. I am.

Saddleback closed down that summer. It was over. The Saddlebackians became the Lost Saddlebackians, and more than that, I lost a friend. A mountainous one.

Over the summer, I had to cope with the grief of that loss. It was hard. I tried to simply not think about it, but that didn’t work. My mind would go to it like a bee to a flower. I was stuck in a world without Saddleback, and I was miserable.

We didn’t commit to a mountain that winter, perhaps out of hope that Saddleback would pull through. It didn’t. We spent the winter bouncing between mountains, sometimes skiing with some of the other Lost Saddlebackians, often not. It was sad and it was hard. A year ago I had been a part of a community, skiing on the mountain that I loved. I had been a living trail map, vandalized with hand drawn trails, full to bursting with nicknames and inside jokes. I missed it terribly.

I’m sorry to say that I didn’t manage to get over Saddleback right away. I couldn’t let it go. I was stuck in the past, missing out on what was happening in the present. I don’t remember much of my skiing that year; it’s all a blur. I wasn’t thinking about skiing. I was thinking about the absence of Saddleback underneath my skis.

The next winter, we found a new place: Wildcat Mountain and Attitash Ski Area in North Conway, New Hampshire.

I liked it there just fine. The town was nicer, the mountains busier, the lodges better. But I was still stuck fast with Saddleback. I couldn’t let go.

It wasn’t just the mountain I was missing. It was also the people.  In the moving of the Lost Saddlebackians to North Conway, we had left one family behind. Remember Patrick and Fiona? They’re siblings. Their family was skiing at Sugarloaf. All season through, it was a feeling of failure, of uncertainty.

There are some kinds of change that you need to accept. Losing Saddleback was one of them. But we didn’t have to lose the Lost Saddlebackians, too. We had memories, foraged trails, and inside jokes, and none of us wanted to lose that. Even the boys, who would never admit it.

It felt kind of hollow without Patrick and Fiona that season. Mitch took on the post of skiing in the back, making sure no one got hurt, but there was no one to whack Mark with their poles, no one to join me in only half understanding the gossip of the other eighth graders. There was no one to complain about how annoying the boys were, and there was no one with whom I could discuss books while the other teenagers chattered on about goodness-knows-what. We were like a clock missing two of its most important cogs. And, for some reason, I thought it was somehow my fault.

I can’t tell you why, but I felt that if I had done something differently, we might be skiing with all of the Lost Saddlebackians instead of just most  of them. I don’t even know what I thought I could have done differently. I just thought I had done something wrong.

It took me a while to realize the toxicity of refusing to allow things to pass, refusing the present in favor of the past. When I did, when I grasped the fact that I was poisoning my experience at these new mountains, I turned to mindfulness.

I’d been practicing mindfulness for two years now; I knew what to do. I took a deep breath, grounded myself in the present, and, gently, I released Saddleback. I treated the memories as though they were clouds, and them do what clouds do best. I let them be blown away into the past, where they belonged, and let my mind become a cerulean sky, free of judgement and open to the concept of skiing somewhere else.

I didn’t vanquish Saddleback from my mind forever, of course. I held onto the memories, but I let Saddleback fall back into the past. I let it go back to where it belonged. I accepted that I wasn’t going to be skiing there that season, and that I wasn’t going to be skiing with Patrick and Fiona, either. It hurt at first, like I was throwing away my entire experience. It felt like I was forcing myself to believe that Wildcat and Attitash were better. But soon I realized I wasn’t. My mind simply didn’t want to accept that I was letting go of the past.

The entire practice of mindfulness is based upon being in the present, without judgment. Neither of those things can ever happen if you’re stuck in the past, or whiling away your time in dreams of the future. Mindfulness teaches you a way to let those things go. You ground yourself in the present by paying attention to your breathing, or sensations you are feeling. And when you do that, you have to let go of imagination, let go of what has already happened. Otherwise, you’ll just keep comparing things to other things, which they can never be, because they are what they are, and nothing else.

Wildcat and Attitash won’t ever be better than Saddleback. It simply isn’t going to happen. But when I got down to it, when I pulled myself back into the present, I realized that I had been gripping the past too hard. Wildcat and Attitash weren’t so bad. I just thought they were, because I was judging them so harshly, comparing them to Saddleback the way we compare movies to books—unjustly. Because no two can ever be the same.

We are not unfeeling machines. We all react to events, sometimes with joy, sometimes with despair. It is those that we treat with sadness and anger that we pay more attention to, that we always try to forget. But in the process, we forget that hanging on too tight to good things can be toxic, too. I’m not telling you that you should never feel sad, and I’m certainly not telling you that you don’t have a right to happiness. I’m saying that you need to be careful with how tightly you grip the past. You can set aside a room or two for emotional memories, because they are things you need to remember, but don’t dwell there. Try to spend most of your time outside of that room, because it’s pointless to lock yourself in with the past when you could be outside making things happen.

I don’t want you to walk away from this article thinking you should simply forget everything that happens to you, thinking you shouldn’t dream because it takes away from being. I want you to know that you should treasure what you have while you have it, and then stash it away like a precious keepsake that will fall apart if you touch it too much once it’s over. I want you to know that it’s no use thinking that all you are going to do in your life will be in the future, because that future doesn’t exist. The only thing that exists is the present, and if you waste that, you will spend your life tucked away in your memories and dreams of a nonexistent someday. Today has to be the only day.

“What day is it?”
“It’s today” squeaked Piglet.
“My favorite day.” said Pooh
-A. A. Milne, Winnie the Pooh

Losing Saddleback was hard for me. It was one of the few times in my life that I dwelt on the past for a long time, and let it turn rancid and toxic. But it was also a kind of cleansing.

In J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter, Dumbledore says, “It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.” Remember this wisdom, would you? Remember the wisdom of Alice and Pooh and Dumbledore.  You’ll never have this day back, so don’t mope about and whine. Go out there. This time is yours and I expect you to use it.

In a KidSpirit Interfaith Connections article, teen writer Olivia Bailey shares what mindfulness practices have taught her about resilience, loss, change, and hope.

The Absence Beneath My Skis

One day, while browsing random quotes on the internet, I came across a very familiar unattributed saying that reads: “You don’t understand the real value of what you have until it’s gone.”

Yet, from very early on, I have been taught to be thankful for whatever I have, and to understand that I am not entitled to privileges but just happen to be lucky enough to be given them. Therefore, I didn’t agree with this quote and decided that a more truthful version would probably be: “You always know exactly what you have. You just never think that you’ll lose it.” Looking back, I realize that this modified quote helped me understand loss as a problem, and this understanding helped me cope with loss by being resilient.

Since I am a middle school student, almost half my day is spent at school. Naturally, I am exposed to philosophical words that I don’t always understand. Most words, like resilience and empathy, are quite casually tossed around until we attempt to learn their true meanings.

I came to understand the concept of resilience last spring, when my class was given the opportunity to help conduct a national-level award function for kids alongside an official organising committee. We had been psyched for this period of the year for a long time. As our list of major tasks got longer, we began to form committees to focus on separate categories. One of the first committees to be formed was the Core Team, which  was to interact with the official organizing team on a daily basis, receive tasks, send updates on our progress, and draft official emails. Because the responsibility appealed to me, I instantly knew I wanted to be a part of the Core Team, and somehow, I was selected.

There never seemed to be a moment to spare, with all the things to be communicated and done, and I was actually having fun writing emails and circulating tasks. It was great while it lasted, but then I started making mistakes.

The initial euphoria of getting onto the Core Team went to my head, and I started ignoring duties and the urgency of certain assignments. Soon I had to step down and hand over all my responsibilities to someone else, because every person in the Core Team was expected to contribute and do their share. I was crushed. It seemed as if the ground had been yanked out from underneath my feet, and I couldn’t breathe. Yet I decided that I wouldn’t show any forms of weakness to anyone, and instead buried myself in work.

I somehow managed to get through the award function. Every time I watched the Core Team rushing around, I would quickly move away to avoid a breakdown. In all the rush, the event was quickly over, and my hastily built mental dam broke, releasing all the pent up negativity and anger. I managed to put up a façade at school, but in my idle time, it would all come crashing back.

Luckily, a teacher and mentor at school understood what I needed. By talking to me, she helped me see my current responsibilities and abilities. She told me stories of her various experiences, and recounted incidents when she saw me living up to my potential. Over a discussion that lasted about an hour, the real meaning of resilience—the binding thread of all my teacher’s stories and the point where, with some effort, everything started getting better—slowly dawned on me.

I realized resilience is the effort I and people all around me put in to make our circumstances less problematic and more favorable. I learned the importance of  living happily in the present by moving on from the problems of the past. Suddenly, everywhere I looked, be it newspapers or the internet, I saw examples of people displaying resilience.

Now that I understood resilience to be the ability to bounce back after a problem, I actively began to look for places to exhibit some. These opportunities could be anything, ranging from leading a group discussion to taking charge of a class project. It wasn’t very difficult to fall into the same rhythm, but the fear of messing up again always lurked just in the shadows. However, as hard as it was, it also felt rather empowering to be actively exhibiting resilience. I gradually moved back up by taking on responsibilities and doing more than what was expected. When I felt more sure of my progress and potential, I knew I had come far, and this time around, I wasn’t going to make the same mistakes.

The experience taught me that anything can be lost and found again, as long as we have a firm net to fall back on. The support of my family and the gentle nudges of my teachers helped me find my rhythm again. Part of my belief in my ability to bounce back stemmed from my friends and family’s belief in me, so their support was essential to my journey.

Now I understand what resilience really is. Resilience is the ability to return to what is normal, and to bounce back to a steady and habitual rhythm after any difficulty or obstruction. Resilience is what has gotten humanity this far, and resilience is what will take us further ahead, to a point where problems are welcomed for their excitement, all because each of us will believe in our ability to bounce back from complications.

Resilience is why we believe that we can solve any problem. Every time we fall, we can brush off our knees and start running again, only this time more sure of ourselves. Failure, or "falling down," is rather important while attempting to win, because the reason we fail is identified, and the next time we try, the chink in our armor has become a strength. Failure becomes a milestone, and it ultimately gives us the knowledge we need to succeed. Eventually, everyone is bound to reach the finish, wait, and then start running again towards the next line in sight.

Looking back, I understand that I did value the opportunity to be on the Core Team, but because I thought I couldn’t and wouldn’t lose it, it gradually and then all in a flash slipped out of my grasp. My experience taught me the true meaning of sayings about appreciation and loss like the one I found on the internet.  We all value what we have and don’t think we’ll lose it, but sometime in the future we will. Instead of looking towards the future with apprehension, my experience taught me to believe in my ability to be resilient and, any time I fall, to brush off any doubts and move ahead confidently.

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments article, teen writer Raavee Tripathi shares how she came to understand the true meaning of resilience, loss, and appreciation.

I'm Positive!

The first gunshot was single, from a handgun or rifle, and then there was the sound of a woman screaming. There was no way to properly describe this sort of screaming for those who haven’t heard it. It's a sound somehow beyond the limitations of the body that produces it, so harsh and sharp as to almost seem otherworldly but so animal as to produce in your own witnessing body a sort of shadow screaming that echoes violently around the inside of your chest.

This world full of war, anguish, and suffering is all Anna Lania has known. The excerpt above reveals the everyday violence and terror to which this character is constantly subjected. Gavriel Savit’s book Anna and the Swallow Man creates a captivating tale set against the backdrop of World War II and weaves together a story filled with resilient characters and precarious adventures. This tale is especially important today, as millions of people displaced by war again face devastating hardships we should all be more aware of.

The novel begins in 1939 in Krakow, Poland, where 7-year-old Anna lives with her father, a linguistic professor who passes down his love of languages to her. At the outset of World War II, tensions begin to rise and ripples of violence shake the everyday life of Anna and her father. At this point in the story, the Nazi army invades Poland and attacks several cities. German forces advance at a dizzying rate from left and right, bombing airfields and attacking naval forces in the Baltic Sea. The Polish army is able to mobilize one million men, but they are continuously outmatched and systematically captured. One day, Anna’s father heads out to take care of some business and never returns. He is presumably taken during a German purge of the city’s intellectuals.

As Anna worryingly waits for her father, she crosses paths with a mysterious and obscure character called the Swallow Man. They are brought together by their common love of languages, and soon Anna convinces this tall willowy stranger to let her accompany him. The pair set off on a never-ending journey to escape the brutal bloodshed taking place around them.

In the story, Savit develops a relationship between the Swallow Man and Anna that can only be described as ever flowing. The Swallow Man is Anna’s riverbank and she is the river. He says “a river goes where the riverbank does, it never has to ask which way but only flows along.” This is a significant element in their relationship and shows Anna’s constant dependency on the Swallow Man.

A prominent theme in Anna’s character development is her gradual loss of innocence. In the beginning of her adolescence, the Swallow Man tries to shield her from the war. However, due to the struggle and fighting around her, the innocent lens through which she views the world slowly begins to shatter. She starts to see the true horrors of the violent goings-on that seem to become a norm in her everyday life. This gradual effect of growing up plays a key part in the story. The book shows Anna’s transition from a small child into a strong woman. As she grows older, the reader feels the anger and confusion that she experiences when she witnesses the world change around her.

I believe Anna represents both resilience and determination. Through her actions she demonstrates that it is possible for people to rise above struggles and difficult moments in life. As the reader, I saw Anna as a bright light in a dark and ominous setting. Throughout the book, she turns out to be an exceptionally fierce and courageous character who remains strong in the face of adversity. Towards the end, even with the tremendous obstacles that she is forced to overcome, there are still aspects of hope and optimism within her.

Throughout the book, the Swallow Man is described as a mysterious, nameless traveller with a flawless ability to adapt and survive. In the beginning, his patient and generous side is prominent in his interactions with Anna, showing that he deeply cares about her.  However, as the story progresses, the reader begins to see darker sides to his character. This leads both the reader and Anna to question their image of him as a virtuous hero. He justifies some of his actions by stating that “each man is the steward of his own soul,” so all individuals are responsible for their own well-being. This philosophy  becomes a crucial aspect of the Swallow Man’s lifestyle and values. This worldview helps the Swallow Man during hard times and provides him with the skills to endure hardships

In the story, there is a considerable emphasis on languages. The Swallow Man and Anna use their linguistic talents to disguise themselves amongst crowds of people and adopt new identities when meeting strangers. The story describes the Swallow Man’s methods to deceive those they meet on their travels into providing them with food, water, and shelter. Depending on the manner of certain individuals, he adapts a new personality to align with theirs and comes up with stories based on the circumstances. Through the power of his storytelling, he is able to conjure up new realities and ideas that specially cater to the individuals that he comes across. Through Anna’s exceptional skill in language acquisition, she is able to master his mysterious way of life, which he calls “Road.” This is a terminology that the Swallow Man uses to explain the way that they must act when travelling and how they must conduct themselves in front of strangers.

My favorite aspect of Anna and the Swallow Man is that it is told from a child’s perspective, a world seen through a seven-year-old's eyes. As the pair venture along through Europe, Anna asks several questions about the warfare and fighting taking place around them. The Swallow Man uses western wolves and eastern bears to symbolise the different sides of the war, and explains the contrasting beliefs of these two groups. For instance, he tells her that while wolves travel and depend upon their packs, bears are more solitary animals. Once they travel to the border, Anna eventually begins to identify the wolves as German and the bears as Russian. The Swallow Man also teaches Anna many lessons that cultivate her ability to survive. Throughout their time together, he persists in fascinating her with his perpetual crypticness and continues to keep the reader curious about his mysterious background.

I give Anna and the Swallow Man four and a half stars out of five because of its intricate plot and complex characters. This book is suitable for readers of all ages. Younger readers will relate to Anna’s perspective, and older readers will understand the subtle implications about the bleak reality of war. In the current global context, with Syrian refugees fleeing genocide, I believe that it is especially important for people to read and learn about the events of World War II. Reading books like this one  provides the younger generation with a platform to fully understand the basic moral issues of the Holocaust, as well as a reference point for realizing  that , across history, there have been geopolitical situations in which people have been forced to leave their homes. . As more readers gain insight into the political and economic factors that caused World War II, they gain awareness of the discrimination and human values that influenced historical events.

Today we face another humanitarian crisis, as millions of displaced people flee conflicts in Syria and around the Middle East. While some citizens are hesitant to let refugees into their countries, others have welcomed them with open arms. For many people, these current challenges are reminiscent of the events of World War II and the Holocaust. Through reading books like Anna and the Swallow Man, we can better understand the hardships that suppressed groups have experienced in the past, and possibly  prevent similar struggles in the future.

Savit’s beautiful writing evokes many emotions of both joy and sadness. Like the characters in the story, the author uses the power of language to skillfully bring together words and sentences that become engraved on the reader’s heart and mind. He creates a world full of bright, shining moments of hope and love amidst the contrasting backdrop of war and loss.

In a KidSpirit Media review, teen writer Ameena Naqvi shares the revelations about resilience, war, struggle, and perseverance she gleaned from Gavriel Savit's novel Anna and the Swallow Man.

A Review of Anna and the Swallow Man

In this increasingly globalized world, people have to adapt to be successful, but adapting is not always easy.

I still remember the day in 2012 when my mom told me that we were going to move to China because of her job relocation. First, I laughed it off, thinking that she was joking.  All my friends lived in America, and I was doing well in school. Moving to China? It was way too late for an April Fool’s joke.

However, as the date got closer, I started to become more and more scared. What if we were actually moving? What would happen to me? As the date began to creep closer and closer, like a tiger coming up onto its prey, I began to realize that I was really going to leave for China.

I was devastated at the idea of moving across the world. I spent many nights crying and asking my mom why we were moving to a country that I had barely been to my entire life. I didn’t know what the environment was like there, or what the people were like, or if I would make any new friends. But the dreaded moment finally came.  As I boarded the plane, I waited for my mom to change her mind or tell me it was all a prank. When we took off, I saw the place I knew, the place I called home, getting smaller and smaller by the second, as I headed into the vast unknown.

Looking back, it is obvious now that I fell victim to fear of the new and different.  At the time, for me, the frightening unknown was called China—a country into which many global companies were rushing in the hope of grabbing a piece of its big emerging market.  With my mom’s job relocation there, I had no choice but to go to Beijing, but I was still unwilling to prepare myself for that strange city.

Stories like mine are becoming increasingly common. Globalization has caused many different cultures and  languages to come in contact with each other, since now we can easily travel all the way around the world.  This ever-surging flow of peoples and commodities constitute a new environment that we must face every day.  These new environments require adaptation if we want to thrive. As the quote often misattributed to Charles Darwin says, “It is not the strongest or the most intelligent who will survive but those who can best manage change.”

Adaptation to new environments can be classified into various categories. The first category is physical adaptation. This includes adjusting to the environment, like the weather or landscape of a new country. There is also linguistic adaptation, which is about learning the language of a new country. We don’t necessarily need to learn the entire language, but we need to at least learn what are often regarded as survival words, like “hello,” “goodbye,” “thank you,” and “I don’t speak this language.” Finally, there is acclimating to a country’s culture, which means eating that nation’s food, learning its customs and history, and so on. Cultural adaption also includes familiarizing yourself with the social structure of the new environment and learning behavioral expectations, table manners, and what is considered polite or rude.

But why is adaptation so important to the resilience of human beings, and how does it make us stronger and more successful in the future?

To find out about how we can be stronger by physically adapting, perhaps we need to first look at the animal kingdom. In the natural world, there are two types of species: generalists and specialists. Generalists survive on a wide variety of food. An example of a generalist would be the raccoon, which can even eat garbage. Specialists, on the other hand, can only eat a very limited selection of food that may be native to a particular environment. A good example of a specialist is the koala, which only eats eucalyptus leaves. Although specialists are very successful in their particular habitats or ecosystems, they are usually less adaptable than generalists and go extinct much more easily.

In today’s globalized society, humans are required to be generalists adaptable to different environments, rather than specialists capable thriving only in one local habitat. To make my point of how essential cultural and social adaptation is to human resilience, let me tell you the story of a friend I’ll call Dave.

Dave was my former neighbor’s child, who moved from Oklahoma City to Beijing at the same time as I did—January 2013—and for the same reason as mine—a parent’s job relocation. Although he was already in Beijing, the center of China, Dave resisted opening himself up to his new home. He thought that China was boring, with nowhere to go and play, and he didn't try to explore. He continued to behave how he would have in America, and he didn't follow any of the Chinese customs, since he didn't want to immerse himself in the culture.  He also didn't try to eat Chinese food, but instead frequented only the very few American restaurants in Beijing. More importantly, he didn't try to learn the local language, which is essential because most Chinese people know little to no English.  He claimed that Chinese was too difficult for him. This means that he couldn't do such simple things as ask people how much money something cost or how to go somewhere. He constantly had to have a Chinese-English speaker around to translate or interpret for him.

While Dave was in Beijing, he was very frustrated that he couldn't make any friends with the local kids. He kept complaining to me and other American kids in our neighborhood about how much he hated China and how Chinese people didn’t understand him. One time he got lost, and he couldn’t ask for directions, so his parents had to call the police to find him. He was constantly in a bad mood, and it was not long before this started to affect his life in and outside of school. Eventually, his parents had no choice but to send him back to America. I understood this decision, for Dave’s inability to adapt physically, linguistically, and culturally to China had made him very unhappy in his new environment. On the day I went to the airport to see him off, I felt sad looking at him disappearing into the departing crowd—I could hardly imagine what he had been through during his time in Beijing.

For the first few weeks after I moved to China, I had the same feelings as Dave.  I had an advantage over him and many of the other international students in Beijing, because I already knew quite a lot of  Chinese.  But the climate, environment, atmosphere, and culture were indeed very different from those in the U.S., and I still had to adjust.  Not long after I arrived in Beijing, I told myself that as I was already there, I had better get used to whatever life was like in my new home.  One of the big things was adjusting to the smog and traffic. I had to learn lots of Chinese customs, such as taking off my shoes when I visited the house of a local resident.  Also, Beijing is very crowded, and residents can only drive on certain days dictated by the government, so I had to get used to using public transportation and taxis much more often.

At first it was hard to adapt to these customs, since they were so different from those back home, but I tried my best, and eventually I did it. Unlike Dave, I managed to adapt to Beijing.  I ended up, upon my departure in 2016, liking to eat Chinese noodles and rice, knowing how to interact with the local people, making a lot of friends, and feeling reluctant to come back to the U.S.

Being adaptable in our globalized world is a powerful tool that allows people to be more resilient and strong in new places, especially in a foreign country like China. If people are adaptable, they can thrive anywhere and be prepared for every situation. Being adaptable does not necessarily mean transforming oneself wherever one encounters a new environment; instead, it is about opening oneself up to new ideas, foods, customs, languages, and cultures—about renewing and enriching oneself with something new and different,  even if it is unpleasant in the beginning. As people do this, they will find themselves more free and open-minded, and will have a better chance of thriving anywhere in the world.

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Nathan Zhang explores how adapting to new cultures, traditions, and environments is essential to thriving in our globalized world.

I Came, I Adapted, I Thrived: Resilience in Our Globalized World

Monsters writhed in the dark abyss
Groans and hisses faintly heard
The pocket dimension
To where objects vanished
Forgotten
A place of myth and legend
Each time the child peered
Darkness met his gaze
Daring him to venture further
He scrambled backwards
The void was never to be explored
He would not cross into the gloom

One day his blue ball slipped from his grasp
The child watched in dismay as it rolled
Into the inviting rectangle of obscurity
Unwilling to forego the precious gift
He clenched his small fists
Steeled himself
Eyes shut while perspiring
He reached into the abyss
His hand perceived outlines of
Action figures and Legos faded from memory
Swallowing, he slid his body into the abyss
He dared not continue
Alone and unaware
Heart beating faster

He thought to glance murky forms
In the corners of his eyes
But when he turned his head
There was no life
They are coming for me
His breath quickened
Instinct shrieked at him to run
Its warning reverberating in his mind
But his body did not obey
Pinned by needles of poisonous fear
That tightened with each second
Only dilated eyes shifted
From side to side in vain

But
No tentacles seized his arm
Nor did scales brush his fingers
Nor did a bestial roar deafen his ears
Enveloped by cool shadows
Silence dulled his pangs of uncertainty
As he clamped sweaty fingers around it
He felt the familiar smoothness of his ball
The needles retracted and
He pulled himself out from under the bed

The boy stood up and straightened
Smiling, he inspected his blue treasure
His imagination conquered

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Haemaru Chung tells of monsters under the bed and how we can be resilient and brave enough to conquer our deepest fears.

The Abyss Under the Bed

In late June,
the mango tree in our yard spills with life
Its limbs overflow, bearing succulent gifts:
yellow, bursting bells—framed with banyan leaves

There is a sunrise painted upon every mango,
shades of red, yellow, and raw green
Its musky aroma blossoms in the air—it screams out to me,
accompanied by the humming of the bees

We raid the mango tree,
juice spilling down our cheeks
Lips stained golden
in the blazing Thai heat

The proper way to eat a mango
is to strip away its yellow coat
and ravage the golden flesh hidden beneath
Fish out the fibers trapped between our teeth

Watch the mangoes sweat, and
let their sweet juices flow through our veins.
We do not wash our hands—our fingers will forever be sticky
with this golden silk.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen writer Yani Li revels in the joy of picking fresh fruit during the summer in Thailand.

Fresh Mangoes

“Success comes to those who dedicate everything to their passion in life. To be successful, it is also very important to be humble and never let fame or money travel to your head.” 
- A. R. Rahman

We all have a passion. We may find it in a way that others do not understand. They may ask how we discover our path; the answer is that we always have a feeling in our hearts, no matter how small, about what we like and enjoy, and that is our passion. Each one of us has an obligation, a responsibility, which we have to fulfil and should not ignore. That responsibility is to follow whatever path has been laid down for us. We humans have to struggle on that path and ignore all material temptations that come to us, for our own good. 

However, most people nowadays end up giving up on their true passions for more material things, such as money, a nice house, good food, and a comfortable life. What they do not know, however, is that if we follow and achieve our dreams, these material needs may come to us eventually, and that these things themselves are temporary, while the satisfaction gained from fulfilling our potential is eternal. Many factors in life may make it difficult to pursue our passions; people may mock us, but inner fulfilment can only be achieved by ignoring all these hurdles and following our passions with resilience. To find true satisfaction in the world, we have to stay true to ourselves and develop resilience to handle the difficulties the world sets for us.

Paulo Coelho illustrates the rewards of pursuing our purpose perfectly in his novel The Alchemist. Young Santiago discovers his life’s purpose at the early age of 16 and spends the next 10 years pursuing it. Though he loses so much during his journey, it is more important for him to find his treasure. He learns about the world and how it works, about compassion and cruelty, the deserts and the mountains, history and magic, growth and neglect, and about the aspect of life that is not visible, the unseen world of the spirit. 

Through Santiago’s tale, Coelho shows that if you give up on your passion, it will leave you without direction.  He also teaches us this lesson with the story of the crystal merchant, who is too afraid to follow his goal and risk losing his wealth and material gain.  If you are not willing to sacrifice other needs for your passion, it may not be your real passion after all. In other words, finding out if you are willing to make sacrifices is also important while finding your passion. But whatever setbacks stand in the way of young Santiago, he ignores them and refuses to back down. He shows true grit and resilience, which leads him to achieve the fulfilment he so longs for.

 A good example of how following our passions with complete disregard for all setbacks can lead us to achieve our long desired goal is Mohammad Ali Jinnah, the founder of Pakistan. His ambition was finding a place where the Muslims of the Indian subcontinent could live and practice their religious beliefs peacefully after gaining freedom from the British colonial authorities. Jinnah gave the Muslims direction and struggled for them despite all barriers, including his own health. Jinnah was diagnosed with tuberculosis after he decided to participate in the establishment of Pakistan. He could have easily ignored the needs of other less fortunate Muslims and focused on his own problems, but he did not give up on them, and became an inspiration for many people to give up their personal needs in order to follow their passions.

Another person who has showed me that following a passion can make us stronger is not famous but is one of my heroes in life: my uncle Ehsan Ullah Bajwa.  As a former Deputy Inspector General of Police and member of the UN War Crimes Tribunal, he has had a distinguished career. Yet he has not cared for material gain, and instead has completely devoted his life to his passion, gaining knowledge, which has made him spiritually and intellectually more capable than others. His very presence makes me feel like I am with a person who is much more advanced than I am. He can introduce people to knowledge that can alter their long held beliefs and open their minds to a completely new perspective they could never see before. 

Not everyone craves reading books and gaining knowledge, but my uncle does, and that very thing has brought him greatness. He has not cared about going after jobs his whole life, because he does not have to look for them—it’s as if jobs are looking for him. He never gave in to the everlasting temptation of material gain. He disregarded offers which would have earned him a lot of money but at the same time acted as hurdles in the path towards his goal, and instead continued life in the way his passion guided him. Uncle Ehsan is the best example I can find of the fact that we never need to work for something harder than we work for our true passions. 

Some of us may wonder, “What is the benefit of following our passions?” After all, it is much easier to give in to simpler methods of gaining “happiness.” I feel those who make this argument have never really experienced the ultimate satisfaction and feeling of accomplishment that comes from achieving a goal one is passionate about. This feeling is the ultimate reward of a life spent following one’s own true path. 

Life may seem to be on the right track when we are following our dreams, but we always have to be careful. We should not focus on material gain, but should also never harm anyone else while pursuing our passion. For example, a person whose passion is to travel around the world should never pose himself a burden to anyone by making someone else, such as a parent, finance a trip. He or she should work hard for this passion and never forget it, as all good things come through hard work and resilience.

My passion is to live in a way that benefits everyone around me. I always try to help everybody I know. I also aim to be friendly to everyone, and to guide them through any hardships they have. I try to make everyone feel that when they talk to me, they are talking to a friend. By nature, I may not be the most generous person, but I strive to be as generous as I can by helping everyone around me in any way possible. I would always prefer to be a helper in people’s lives rather than remaining a spectator. And I think that I am heading in the right direction.

Every single being on earth has a purpose. A life is wasted if that purpose is not fulfilled, and wasting a life is a sin as great as destroying a soul. When we find our passions, we should follow them with grit and should not care about any other thing in the world, because we can only achieve ultimate happiness when we follow our ambitions with resilience. 

In a KidSpirit Feature article, teen writer Huzaifa Liaqat explores how following our true passions with resilience, grit, and perseverance can lead to true fulfillment and happiness.

Resilience Through Passion

Snow is falling on Glass Street.
It treads air by kicking wildly in the black-lion night,
Defiance borrowed from the faces of the people
Who walk the sidewalks after dark.

Everything is slippery 
And jeweled with the denial of its choosing.

A man reads a newspaper, 
Caved in on himself like a beetle.
Curly cued antennae billow from his mouth in a hazy fog. 

A stray dog disappears and reappears every few blocks
With its nose pressed to the leaking ground.

Streetlamps mingle with pinpricks of snow
Too heavy 
To be 
Beautiful
But
At night everything fades like paint
And comes back in a dazed morning,
Still containing traces of invisibility.

They come here for this reason,
The ones who want to vanish for a while 
And dissipate into a translucence.
Into houses with tired eyes 
And hollow churches preaching to the air. 

The Past polishes cement with the coarse soles of his shoes. 
People find that the roads are shiny enough to see reflections.
Now when they walk they see light refracted off of sky
And the cold bites them awake.

The inhabitants of Glass Street look up
To see snow fighting its way to numb fingers and upturned eyelashes,
Weighed down by the defiance of a thousand stories
Hidden in the ones who walk the sidewalks
After dark. 

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Eliza Moore explores pain, resilience, and hope. 

Glass Street

My family places faith in DBT — Dialectic Behavior Therapy. DBT is based on a combination of accepting your feelings and behaving in a positive way. 

For my sister, who has depression, this means acknowledging her sadness and leaving the house for school or work. For me, it means accepting my physical disabilities and doing what I love. The important word is  "and" as opposed to "but." "And" shows that the feelings and actions have equal value, whereas "but" implies the actions outweigh the feelings.

DBT teaches skills that are guided by principles. These principles are based on the idea that behavior and feelings impact each other. Opposite action is the skill that embodies the D — dialectic — in DBT. A dialectic is two sides of a concept that appear to conflict but actually coexist. Opposite action involves feeling one way and acting another. You might be disappointed that someone else got the lead in the school play — that would be reasonable — and go to rehearsal and be the best flying monkey you can be! We call that “smile like you mean it.” 

I find that every day has disappointments.  Some are minor, like being unable to hold a basketball in my lap. Some are soul crushing, like being denied access to the community school that seemed so perfect. Whatever the lack of visualized joy, I peer out at the future through the hazy miasma of discouragement smiling like I mean it. Acting in a positive way can increase the likelihood that your future experiences are good, but there is no guarantee. 

The future holds many pitfalls that cannot be anticipated. There is no way to prepare for all possible problems, but you can build up your emotional bank so you are stronger when hard times come. Working hard and succeeding at a difficult task makes you less vulnerable to feeling like a failure when failures happen. This skill is building mastery. You might build mastery by practicing your instrument, making electronics, baking pies, or running. I work at my writing every day that I am able, so when my body doesn’t cooperate with my brain, it is just a bad day, not a life failure. I collect hard earned successes and lean on them when my legs collapse under me.  The next morning I get up and “try it all again.” 

“Tomorrow we'll try it all again” — my mom says that at the end of every evening. She plans to persevere. In some cases the goal is long term, but sometimes it is just getting through the day.  Do not mistake getting through as a cop out. We all have days that never seem to end, but giving up cannot be the plan. Having perseverance as part of the plan means setting expectations that are achievable. We may not always succeed, but we can try. By trying, we are following the plan and fulfilling the expectations we set. On a rough day, that is success. 

There is a skill for times when even trying seems to be more than we can  handle: radical acceptance of ourselves. For some people this skill means accepting being angry. In my case, I accept that I often feel resentful that I cannot speak. Both anger and resentment are often met with disapproval because they are not positive. Radical acceptance is one of the most important skills and the most difficult to achieve. It means accepting your feelings about your reality without judgement, especially negativity. When we focus on how bad something feels we can route our energy into a cycle of compounding failures.  When we validate our feelings instead of denigrating them, we are better positioned to proceed productively. In my family all feelings are valid, even hate and desolation. My brother can be jealous of all the attention I need. My sister can feel inexplicably sad. When we accept our emotions, their frenetic nature doesn’t take control, so feelings can ebb naturally.  

We may rest during times that are too emotionally or physically overwhelming. On most days I  practice the skill that represents the B — behavior — in DBT: “just keep swimming.”  Following this mantra is how I get through those days that present challenges. I might swim slowly, or against the current, or in circles, but I never give up. The behavior is the swimming — it might be the work of building mastery, the continuing perseverance in the face of discouragement, or just getting through the day. Being active gives you a chance to affect your direction. It also feels good to be in control. 

Taken together, these skills make my family resilient. We work hard at things we consider important, baking the perfect challah and forging relationships to improve accessibility in public schools. When obstacles arise, we plan to try again, debugging a computer program and rewriting the conclusion. If we feel unhappy, we smile like we mean it, visiting annoying relatives and doing that thousandth worksheet.  In the worst situations, we accept our own and each other's feelings, despising a bad kindergarten teacher and getting overwhelmed on Christmas. Through it all we keep swimming, with faith in our principles and unwavering confidence that tomorrow we will try harder and do better, because we are resilient.

In a KidSpirit Interfaith Connections article, teen writer Abraham Weitzman explains how his family practices DBT (Dialectic Behavior Therapy) to cultivate resilience and persevere through times of disappointment, sadness, fear, or uncertainty. 

Just Keep Swimming

No one knows
That I’m fine
As I get up and stand
Attention is my demand

No one cares (except my parents)
That the soul exists
Wants to win
And can’t be unhappy

There is some truth
That I stand up
As life keeps pummelling me down

The sun nods disappointedly and the clouds frown
I won’t give up trying even if I’m known to act like an angel
I can still laugh, frown, and get angry
A diamond in the rough that’s me
Yet I will succeed

As reality streams through, peeking
There is no one who knows
That sometimes the devil appears and sometimes it goes

Though I’m soft as cotton, cotton can end up cushioning a stone
Pink can be black, while clouds can be storms
Unicorns will charge, with spear-like horns
Bubblegum can choke, and flowers can sting

Roses have thorns just like I have a brain
I’m not any lily, I’m not an angel
I’m a person through and through, so I get up to start anew
Though no one will know

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Pragya Natarajan writes of secret inner strength.

No One Knows

Myocarditis: inflammation of the heart muscles. The moment I was diagnosed with this illness, which is serious but treatable, more than half of my body trembled with joy and satisfaction. 

Strange as it sounds, I was secretly hoping for a powerful strike like a supernatural firework booming in the sky to stop everything in its tracks.  In the end, I realized that myocarditis had unfolded my true self.

I look back on myself as a small child — a frantic book-lover who crawled behind the curtain with a novel and wouldn’t come out except for meals and bed; a passionate learner and student who took delight in every single moment of knowledge acquisition and encouraged others to do the same; a responsible citizen who was filled with so many dreams and ambitions to make the world a better place. I had a naturally peaceful mind that had not yet been exposed to the outside world. I lived in the perfection I created, believing that everything I did was meaningful. There was nothing like  sadness or indifference in me. 

However, when I entered high school, the world suddenly became diverse and tempting, and I began to change.  As Wechat made it to the top of Chinese social media platforms, numerous peers shared their glorious moments online. Surprisingly, I found these really disturbing and discouraging. I wasn’t happy if every picture in my “friends’ circle” showed magnificent vacation scenery when I was working on my computer, nor was I satisfied if my friends sent out links to volunteer work or progress reports on their projects: when others had done so much, I had done nothing! 

In terms of “friends,” strictly speaking, I had few. Back in my old primary school days, there were kids from wealthy military families who copied my homework, gave me used pens as gifts like I was a garbage bin, and left me with all the classroom chores. Somehow I saw them as amiable playmates but never got into long conversations with them, partly because they looked down upon me as a pathetic little bookworm, and partly because I looked down upon them as spoiled and ignorant kids. 

People in secondary school have been even more difficult to please. There was a girl in my class who teased me about my ignorance of singers and movie stars for five years. The nickname she gave me, “Stupid Yin,” became even more popular than my real name; boys who had hardly spoken to me before, and even seemingly considerate girls, began to point at me and shout “Stupid Yin” right through the air while shuddering with laughter. 

Every time this happened, anger and contempt grew in me simultaneously, and I became both a nerd and a jerk. It was always the same when I met people: I was both conceited and self-abased. I rejected people by keeping a distance, but secretly wished to befriend them. I didn't want to see people as better than I was in any way, but I didn’t believe in my abilities. Consequently, I always told myself I should do whatever was necessary to prove that I was stronger than anyone else. 

As a result, I set higher and higher bars for myself but was not determined and mature enough to sit down and concentrate on reaching them while others were enjoying their rightful leisure time. I envied their stress-free lives of midnight desserts and museum tours. There was an incessant beeping voice inside my head, nudging me to stop and rest. Ironically, I gave in to that fatigue and sluggishness instead of sticking to realizing my dream of becoming stronger than anyone. 

Thus I spent my time watching TV series, paying attention to the latest fashion trends, and spoiling myself on social media instead of tackling physics. I let myself be carried away by the hustle and bustle of flippant people while I should have picked up a book or chatted with people from all walks of life to learn about their stories. I even found it boring and undeserving  to be an  all-rounded person. The tempting whirlpool of superficial things washed away my aspiration like the ferocious whirl of hurricane.

Tasks never disappeared due to my unwillingness to complete them, and worries about accomplishing them built in me day after day. Not until I couldn’t breath normally, stumbled through the corridors, and felt like my head was whirling did I realize that I had dragged myself to the brink of a real breakdown. 

Myocarditis. I earned it. I traded my health for self-discovery. When there was suddenly nothing to worry about, there came a complete revelation. No matter how I may hide or escape from the route of life, it always stays the same and waits for me tor resume my journey. Whether I rush here and there in anxiety or sit down in calmness, things don’t change. As that’s the case, I shall not go back to my old life again. Not back to the days when people and their lives were all that mattered. 

There are a million ways to fulfill one’s dreams and ambitions, and the particularly carefree and comfortable one that seems to dominate social media and my classmates’ conversations may not be the perfect match for me. “Stupid Yin” just stands for the silly laughter one group invokes when it cannot understand another, and I now know I should never look down upon myself because of that laughter. It is made up of ignorance and arrogance most of the time. Stupid as I was, I fastened myself to a wholly different attitude and manner from them. 

My unique hilarious dance will not be changed by how others behave. My faith in family and school responsibilities, as well as appreciation of myself, awaits; the golden old days still doze in a cozy corner of this complex world. By listening to the voices deep in my mind, I gradually find that sun-like child smiling at me and coming back alive. She radiates her warmth and passion to me and helps me to become better. When I am asleep, I will tell my old self about myocarditis and how it somewhat cured its painful cause, the “mental disorder” made up of jealousy, unwillingness, ignorance, and the last straw—mountainous stress. 

In a KidSpirit Awesome Moments article, teen writer Xinru Yin shares how an illness led to self-discovery, understanding, and inner strength.

Disorder or Cure?

“I wanna be like you-oo-oo! I wanna walk like you, talk like you too-oo-oo! You’ll see it’s true-oo-oo, someone like me-ee-ee, can learn to be someone like you-oo-oo!” 

I find myself humming the jazzy tunes of King Louie, a gigantic orangutan, months after the release of Disney’s remake of The Jungle Book in 2016. Combining state-of-the-art digital animation and old-fashioned storytelling, Disney explores humanity’s eternal conflicts and ties with nature through this glorious remake of Rudyard Kipling’s tales of the jungle. 

The story follows the journey of Mowgli, a human child brought up by a pack of wolves in an Indian jungle, as he ventures into the unknown to protect himself and his pack from the attack of a vicious tiger named Shere Khan (Idris Elba). Mowgli leaves his wolf mother Raksha (Lupita Nyong’o) and his pack leader Akela (Giancarlo Esposito) to embark upon a journey of self-discovery and development with his mentor, the panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley). On this journey,  he meets new animals in the jungle: the python mesmerist Kaa (Scarlett Johansson), the warm and fuzzy bear Baloo (Bill Murray), and the singing gigantopithecus King Louie (Christopher Walken).     

As you have probably noticed, all but one of the characters in this movie are animals. Therefore, casting posed a bit of a predicament. The character of Mowgli is the only live action human character who appears on screen. All of the other actors and actresses provide voices for CGI-rendered animals. Director Jon Favreau introduces Neel Sethi as the 10-year-old boy who plays the most important role. Favreau and casting director Sarah Finn chose Sethi from over a thousand child actors around the world and entrusted him with the job of holding up much of the weight of the movie. Sethi definitely did not let the filmmakers down. He fits the character description of Mowgli well, and his outstanding acting, combined with the hyperreal animation, provides the audience with a world that is not only realistic, but breathtakingly beautiful. 

Renowned celebrities Lupita Nyong’o, Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, and Ben Kingsley also did amazingly with their powerful voices, contributing to the overall effect of the film. The actors’ performances were remarkable because they fit their roles so well. Johansson fit the tempting seductress role of Kaa from the past experiences she has had as an actress. Kingsley’s deep and powerful voice was a perfect match for the wise and elderly Bagheera. Murray’s comedic personality was also paired well with the comical character Baloo. 

 These characters are not exclusive to the 2016 version of The Jungle Book. Another astounding aspect of the movie is its many remakes throughout history. In 1967, Walt Disney Studios created an animated musical based on a collection of short stories by English author Rudyard Kipling, which teach moral lessons through anthropomorphism. However, Walt Disney was not content with the dark and sinister mood of Kipling’s book and chose to employ a more cheerful and positive screenplay in the 1967 film’s production. 

In the 2016 remake, the movie loses many of its musical numbers and features a different ending in order to follow the theme of Kipling’s original writings more closely. While Disney focused on the differences between humans and animals, the new version of the film celebrates the idea of humans and nature existing together as one. These artistic choices show how much society has changed in the past fifty years; ideas that weren’t conceivable in the 1960s have become the status quo of the 21st century. 

As human society has evolved to become more open-minded and aware about the environment, our film and animation techniques have evolved as well. The Jungle Book has received tremendous international recognition and acclaim in large part because of its unprecedented success in animation and cinematography. I’ve never seen digital rendering look more strikingly realistic. All the fur on the wolves, every leaf stem, and each teeny-tiny beehive hexagon can be seen in amazing detail. This movie does not look like animation or a cartoon, it looks like reality. The 684 visual and special effects editors left out no details and polished everything to perfection.  Every scene displays the extensive research they did to create each plant or animal and put together a hauntingly beautiful world that truly comes to life for the viewer. 

The fabulous music, costumes, makeup, and sound effects brilliantly connect each scene of the movie and add to this hyper reality that makes the film so memorable. The screenplay, written by Justin Marks, balances the story of Disney’s animated adaption and Kipling’s original works to develop a plot that is funny, exciting, and sometimes melancholic. This movie will have you reaching for the tissues one minute and clutching your stomach from laughter the next. To further the dramatic effect of the movie, John Debney composed and conducted a charming musical score. Taking inspiration from the original Disney soundtrack, Debney’s score definitely captures the attention of viewers’ ears.

The overarching theme of The Jungle Book is unity between humanity and nature. As technology becomes more and more advanced, humans have begun to not only lose touch with our natural roots, but to destroy them. Deforestation, forest fires, over consumption, poaching — these are a few of many human-caused catastrophes destroying animal habitats and endangering precious wildlife. The Jungle Book tells us that we are breaking the balance between nature and humanity, and shows us the consequences. The “red flower” (fire) that obliterates half of the jungle symbolizes the power of destruction humans hold. The animals fear humans, they fear the “red flower,” they fear us because we will stop at nothing to urbanize, industrialize, and make money. 

It is this greed and selfishness that The Jungle Book warns us against. The movie makes us think, “Is it time to stop exploiting mother earth?” Is it time to go back to the nature? Is it time to put out the “red flower” that fuels our innate desire for growth and development? On this  mission to save planet Earth, the human race must be resilient in order to succeed. We are bound to encounter many obstacles along the way of this ecologic revolution, whether global warming, oil spills, or habitat loss, but we must never give up the fight for our planet. As individuals, we must each fight and stand back up if we’re beaten down. As a community, we must rise and fall together, never surrendering, always coming back stronger. As long as we have resilience, I believe that we will always be triumphant in the end. 

Ultimately, The Jungle Book is a truly enchanting piece of art that makes an impression on all of its viewers. It teaches several lessons through its theme and makes us think about our choices. This film definitely deserves five out of five stars, and I recommend it for everyone who likes a good old Disney-style story with fantastic visual effects. 

In a KidSpirit Media review, teen writer Andrew Lu gives his take on Disney's remake of The Jungle Book.

The Red Flower: A Review of The Jungle Book

Wake up now.
Wake up, you with your head lying low
Battered by looks, words, and actions
Always in a constant state of mental tension
Being told that however hard you buck up,
you won’t add up.

They want you to give up, to break,
For your mind and soul to finally take the cake.
But will you, under all that weight,
Give in to the jealousy and hate?

No, you refuse to.
Let your efforts and resilience break through.
Prove to everyone that you have the fervor.
Make your point hit hard and last forever
All because you never gave in,
Despite the hurt or the sting.

Don’t give up and stay sessile,
Always fight and be resile.
Rejuvenate, and wake up to face another day.

In a KidSpirit poem, teen poet Rand Ang Siong Lin shares the importance of resilience, perseverence, and self-confidence.

Wake Up

My upbringing has taught me to fight, to stand strong. 

The world is a confusing place. Some people are nice, but many are not. When someone hurts you, you can’t show them you’re afraid. There are many instances when I have come face to face with such problems. People have bullied me and put me down, but my friends, family, and teachers have always been by my side, guiding me to become an independent protagonist. At school and at home, I have been taught to ignore what people say about me and to just be myself. I have learned a great deal from my upbringing, and will value those lessons forever.

My school, Riverside, has had a great influence on me. It has shown me the world and the people in it — some keeping it together, some tearing it apart. I have attended Riverside since I was four years old, and its practices have taught me what it is to be a true leader, a protagonist. It has given me the power to believe in myself and have confidence in my own capabilities. The way I have been brought up in my school has made me a superhero by showing me that I can, in Gandhi's words, "be the change" and help people, no matter my age. 

Riverside is getting me ready for the world — the sorrows and losses I may face, the disappointment I may be to people, the friends who may break my trust. I know not give up on myself. In times of sadness and change, I have learned not to let the anger get to me, and to just think. If I stop and think for a moment, letting the problem get into my head and weave its way around my brain, I can understand and solve it. When I know something is wrong, I won’t just ignore the problem, but think of ways to make it better. Once, in class, my friends were fighting amongst one another. Even though I wasn’t part of it, I tried to resolve it and make them see reason. I could have backed away, as it was not my fight, but I chose to add value.

My school, since the very beginning, has given me the opportunity to explore my surroundings and shown me what freedom tastes like. As I grew up, I understood that not everyone has that freedom to do what they like. By practicing “FIDS” — Feel, Imagine, Do, and Share — I became more aware of people like this. FIDS is a process for empathizing with others. By stepping into their shoes, I feel what they feel, try to imagine how I can help, put the idea into action, and then share about the surplus I added to the community to make people aware. This practice has helped me show gratitude for what I have. Whenever I feel like I am taking my life for granted, I think about people less fortunate than I am. 

Riverside has also helped me think more deeply about problems like climate change and human rights. My school has even gone on to empower us to make our own contributions to improve these matters. In grade five, my class went through an aggarbati  [incense stick] experience, in order to understand the concept of children’s rights and how they are abused. One way people treat children unfairly is by forcing them to work in factories all day long for very little income. My classmates and I spent three days in a big black tent, rolling aggarbatis. Our idea was to help underserved children by selling our aggarbatis and using the money to buy tickets for the kids to go to a garba [Indian dance] celebration so they could have fun. We shared this process with our school and society. 

By helping now, we can make a big difference in the world later. My school says that every child has the passion to lead the world and make it a better place. 

My parents have also played a big role in my journey of growing up. From wiping my tears to giving me strength when I am feeling low, they have helped me become independent and confident. Even learning to walk was due to their encouragement and confidence that I could stand on my own feet. When I was angry or frustrated, they gave me reasons why I shouldn’t be and made me look on the bright side. They taught me to talk to somebody and share my feelings when  I am down. 

In a KidSpirit Interfaith Connections article, teen writer Nargis Mathur explores how her school and family have taught her to face change, loss, and difficulty with resilience.

Why I Am Me

We all face challenges and change, falls and failure. Now more than ever, resilience is crucial to thriving in our world. In this issue of KidSpirit, young contributors plumb the depths of their experiences to explore the strength of the human spirit. 

Resilience Group Guide

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