Not Perfectly, But Fully

There’s something about mornings that remind me that to rise up isn’t really about my body leaving the bed. Rising is more about the spirit deciding to step forward although there’s a heavy weight pressing it down. I’ve had mornings where my eyes opened, but my heart stayed buried in the previous day's heaviness. On those days, it kind of takes more than my alarm going off to make me rise up. Those days took courage.  To rise up is to choose again. It is to say, ‘yes, I’m tired, yes, the world is loud, but still, I’ll move.’ I think of my mom sometimes when I think about rising. The way she’d get up even now that she’s 45, before the cock crowed, her hands already reaching for tasks, her face showing no sign of the fatigue her body has carried for years. In all these times, I don’t think she rose for herself alone. She rose for us too. She rose for survival. Ours and hers. She rose because she didn’t have the luxury of staying down. And that’s where I learned that rising is more than a mere act and it’s a responsibility.  Rising sometimes is stubborn and sometimes it’s clumsy. There’s one time, in my first year at the university, I failed badly during the week we were having back to back presentations at school even after all my practice. I wanted to hide, bury myself under blankets and shut the world out. But somehow, the thought of staying down felt even worse than the failure and humiliation itself. So I got up the next day and still prepared for the next presentation. I was shaky at first, pretending my hands weren’t trembling, pretending my confidence wasn’t cracked. But isn’t that what rising up means most times? Pretending until the strength becomes real? The world asks us to rise in different ways every day. Rise above the gossip. Rise above the heartbreak. Rise above the setbacks. Sometimes, it feels unfair that we’re constantly asked to get back up, but the harsh truth is, that’s what makes life beautiful. That we get the chance to rise again and again, no matter how many times we’ve fallen. All in all, rising up isn’t about never falling. It’s about making falling less final. With love🌸 ^{[img1](https://pixabay.com/photos/sun-evening-sunset-rising-sun-1502172/) [img](https://pixabay.com/photos/sun-rays-forest-koyasan-temple-fog-7387131/)}