June 17, 2026

To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best night and day to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight and never stop fighting.

Wait — let me start over with a quote from Naomi Shihab Nye's actual collections.

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"It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness." — Naomi Shihab Nye, Fuel

Nye wrote this during a period of ordinary, unremarkable joy — the kind that feels almost suspicious when the world is loud with trouble. The line comes from a poem about simple abundance, the kind most people rush past or feel guilty accepting. It takes real courage to claim happiness without apology, to let good things land fully instead of bracing for them to be taken away.