Begin Anyway

The reading world lost a beloved friend this week. Harper Lee, author of To Kill a Mockingbird, passed away at the age of 89. Through her gifted knack for storytelling and character-building, Lee opened a window into the American south of the 1960’s that decades have been unable to close. In the New Yorker, Postscript: Harper Lee, 1926-2016, Casey Cep writes “One of our greatest watchers died in the little town where she was born, almost ninety years ago, only a few streets away from the patch of land on Alabama Avenue where she learned to read and write, less than a mile from the courthouse she made famous.”

My story today is not about Lee, or her books, but rather about what her writing represents. Writing is hard! Putting pen to paper (or fingers to keys) takes determination, will, and yes, a great deal of courage. The title for today’s post is part of a longer quote attributed to Harper Lee that goes as follows: “Real courage is when you know you are licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” This is a story about sharing your voice, no matter what.

I was reminded of this quote this week when going through some photos I took on a recent walk through Vancouver’s rough and tumble downtown eastside. The wall art you see above intrigued me so I took a quick snap in the pouring rain and decided to do some digging around the why, what and how of this sentence so starkly painted. What could it mean?

I soon learned that this sentence is part of a poem that Vancouver freelance writer and editor Amanda Grondahl wrote. This sentence from her poem was painted on this wall on Powell Street as part of The Whisper Project aimed at bringing language to life using large-scale typography in downtown Vancouver for its 125th anniversary. With further digging I learned that in the mid 2000’s Grondahl started a reading and writing club for marginalized women in Vancouver’s troubled eastside called The Intrepid Pens. Members ranging from ages 18 to 86 gathered weekly to share stories and in turn, write about them so that their voices could be heard, and lives, changed. As Grondahl writes “When we write and share our stories, people are stripped bare. In that position, you open yourself up to receive support that might not have come if you hadn’t been so vulnerable.”

At the same time as I was doing some research for this post, another brilliant quote came across my path from a different photography source, National Geographic. In an interview with Malala Yousafzai, National Geographic asked the youngest ever Nobel Peace Prize winner what gave her the courage to speak up for girls around the world. Not surprisingly, her motivation is tied tightly to the power of voice:

“I consider myself very lucky to be on this platform where I can be the voice of the 60 million girls who are deprived of education, but I think it’s very important that children and kids think that their voices are powerful. It does not matter what your age is. We should believe in ourselves. If we want the future to be better, we need to start working on it right now.”

If you had a platform, what would your story be? How would you make your voice heard? Last week’s post marked my 300th here on WordPress. I have been writing these missives almost every Sunday for about the past 5 years, except for some absences this year when my heart and creative spirit just wasn’t in it. As Grondahl would put it, my neck and my shoulders were not fitting together so well. But, while my short stories about photography and traveling do not have the gravitas of the stories of Harper Lee, Malala or Grondahl, perhaps they are simply a means to have my voice heard by those willing to listen each week.

While I have not been blessed with children of my own, a part of me hopes that these stories I share each week will serve as a simple legacy: an appreciation for the tiny moments that make up a life well lived. In the end, as Harper Lee would tell us, we just need to have the courage to “begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”