I remember when I was on the come up, confused and often angry, unsure about who I was and where I was going. In Scarborough, where I was born, we lived in a small basement for a time, and growing up in those neighborhoods gave us the blessing of work ethic but the curse of fear; the kind of fear that was all-consuming, that around the corner there lay only a dead end. Struggling from school to school, moving from one town to another, racking up an impressive list of Cs and Ds, it felt like the quicksand that was life was eating me whole. Today, I got into Yale Law School while talking Gaza with my friend Hussein. Really, all I could feel then was a heart-felt thanks, to the many mentors who took me under their wing; to my dear professors; to my parents; to my friends. Abdi just last week reminded me that the hustle never ends; Rana reminds me all the time that the world is malleable; Sabah, Osman, Rohit, Arjun, Irfan, and many others — I wish I could name you all but it’s been a long day — who keep me fired up; to the young brothers and sisters coming up who I’d drop everything to help in any way; thank you, all of you, for letting me be part of your story. As the late, great entrepreneur Aaron Swartz asked, as we should all ask every day: “What’s the most important thing you can be doing…and why aren’t you doing it right now?”
Posted on: Wed, 06 Aug 2014 00:50:20 +0000
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