 So I'll be beginning my reflections with a poem from the 13th century Persian poet and mystic, Rumi, whom you might have heard of. It's called The Guest House. This being human is a guest house. Every morning a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness. Some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor. Welcome and entertain them all. Even if they're a crowd of sorrows who violently sweep through your house, empty it of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably. They may be clearing you out for some new delight. The dark thought, the malice, the shame. Meet them at the door laughing and invite them all in. Be grateful for whoever comes because each has been sent as a guide from beyond. So if I were to sit down and speak with my 18-year-old self over a cup of steaming chai, the first thing I think I would tell them, and this is something I actually tell my 11-year-old daughter, is that be curious, engage, and embrace the challenges and difficulties in life. As terrifying as it can be, it's the adversities that teach you some of your most amazing lessons. There is a caveat there. You need to have the right mindset. So what do I mean? It's easy to say and really hard to do. So when I graduated from high school, like a high-achieving Persian girl normally does, I had tens of objectives and goals. I wanted to go to a good college. I wanted to go to a top-tier law school. I wanted to pass the bar exam, be a successful attorney, and find a partner who met me in all my goals and ambitions. Check, check, check. Fast forward. I graduated from GW Law. I took the bar exam. Two weeks after the bar exam, I married my husband who had just finished his PhD, and I was only a quarter of a century old, and I felt like I had it all planned. Well, guess what? I was wrong. I went to my honeymoon, and a week later, a friend noticed a big bump on the side of my neck. I wasn't symmetrical, she said. And because I wear a headscarf, as some Muslims do, I didn't notice. I would go to school, and I was busy with the bar exam, and I was busy with law school, and I wasn't really spending a lot of time looking at my own neck. So I didn't notice. And it was during the wedding and the festivities, where my friend saw me without my headscarf, that she noticed this. So I'll never forget the day. It was, you know, a week after my honeymoon, I'm going into a specialist's office, and the specialist after the scans and tests told me, well, you either have thyroid cancer or you have lymphoma, but it's cancer. And, you know, I'm looking at my dad, like, what's going on here? Like, that wasn't the plan. And my eye fell on this quote on the doctor's desk. And it happened to be yet another Persian mystic poet from the 13th century. And you might have heard of this. It said, I complained I had no shoes until I saw someone who had no feet. Now I'm one of those people who truly believes that there is nothing that happens in this life that is by accident. At a deeply cellular level, I know that I was meant to be there, and my eyes were meant to fall and reflect on that quote. And so I knew there was a message, a divine message there for me. And so I took stock of what was happening. While everything was reeling around me, and I'm wondering, wait a minute, I'm supposed to be going to Boston and moving with my husband and I'm packing, and what am I supposed to be doing here? I took a moment and said, breathe, and wait to see what God has in store for you. So, of course, I wept. My husband wept. We were terrified. We were scared. But I realized that there is a message and I need to keep myself open to that. I can't give in to the despair and the worry. And as we got to Boston, as I got to Boston, and I'm going to oncology appointments, and I'm going to PET scans, and I'm going to bone marrow biopsies, which I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy. I think it was my third or fourth bone marrow biopsy, which my husband was fainting in. He was there and the nurse left me to go and help him out, and that's another story of my life. That's another story. I had so much pain, like physical pain, and I was, you know, here I was in newlywed and I was supposed to be going to law firm interviews. Instead, I was nauseous and picking up hair from the ground and bald and vomiting. And that wasn't the plan that I thought I had for myself. And so a beautiful Turkish Sufi friend came and spoke to me. And I won't forget, it was 2003, I'm dating myself, I know. It was autumn 2003 in Boston, and it was a beautiful afternoon. And she told me that I had to view life's challenges as a wave. And that you can resent the wave and you can fight it, but you'll drown. And you can be mad at it and ignore it and you will drown. But if you're curious and you lean in a little and you embrace that wave, you will go further than you ever would have otherwise. Now that's really easy to do, or really easy to say, but incredibly hard to do, right? But somehow that seeped into my being. It seared itself in my mind, and that was the mantra that I used. And I told myself that this is how I was going to view the next six to seven months of my life where I would have all these things going on. And I decided to volunteer at legal services. And I decided to go into the homes of people who were living on very little every month, who lived in violent neighborhoods, who were dealing with mental health issues and loneliness and poverty. And what I realized is it took me back to that moment in the doctor's office where instead of sitting there and being angry and resentful about all that was going wrong in my life, I could realize instead of complaining that I had no shoes, there were plenty of people who had no feet. And even though I was going through this medical upheaval, I had a safe home. I had someone who loved me. I had food. And while I wasn't wealthy, I mean, we had just graduated. We weren't wealthy, but I had much more than my clients did. And I had my education that I could fall back on to fill the void that was within. I might have not been able to work full-time, but I could fall back on that. And more than anything else, I had my reliance on God and my spirituality to reframe what I was going through. So what I've come to realize in my life is that God will send you gifts. Sometimes we can't deal with the wrapping. Sometimes we don't like the wrapping at all. But if we can take a step back and realize that there's a gift there and we lean in, there's a lot to learn from that. And I learned through my experience how to be generous and how to give back in a moment where I didn't want to give back. And if you asked me about that time, I was flying. I was spiritually and emotionally flying. And so this is the gift I would give you to think about how you would welcome the guests into your guest house, how you would try to embrace the wave. And I invite you to take a moment, maybe today, maybe tomorrow in the next two weeks, and write it down for yourselves. Put it in an email to yourself or a beloved friend. Send it, you know, through social media to whomever you wish, or put it in a journal. But ask yourselves, how will you embrace life's difficulties? Because I think this is a fundamental question that will shape the rest of your lives. Thank you.