Welcome to Daily SPARC – each weekday our chaplains, friends from the Penn Religious Communities Council and other voices from campus will be posting messages of support and encouragement. 

Today’s message is by Penn Alum, Du’aa Moharram:

We

are living in unprecedented times. The amount of fear, anxiety, and general unease coursing through the American public’s veins is enormous. Community, connection, and reflection can be tools to help ease our anxieties in this time of instability.

An

additional method that may be effective is offered in one of my favorite books, Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Albom. “If you hold back on… emotions- if you don’t allow yourself to go all the way through them- you can never get to being detached, you’re too busy being afraid. … But by throwing yourself into… emotions, by allowing yourself to dive in, all the way, over your head even, you experience them fully and completely….And only then can you say, ‘All right. I have experienced that emotion. I recognize that emotion. Now I need to detach from that emotion…”

We

cannot change or control the external circumstances that have led us here- but we can spend time working to become in tune with ourselves and at peace with our own struggles. Sitting with our emotions, and not running away from them, can be incredibly effective in helping us move through them and reach the next rock we are meant to land on. May we all have strength and determination in these times, and may we find comfort and endurance in each other and in the powers we each worship.