Day 8 - Anuj Jain

Dear Reva Behn

I’ve been sitting with your invitation to gather 64 letters — and honestly, it landed in me right where everything else has been landing lately: in that crowded, overloaded part of the heart that is trying to hold too much.
 
Because it really does feel like the world is piling on.
 
Bad news stacked on bad news. Conflicts and wars and desperate scenes we can’t unsee. Prophecies and doomsday language. Glaciers melting, polar bears dying, viruses spreading. Food contaminated, water scarce, wildfires ripping through places that used to feel “safe.” Tariffs and economic anxiety, while the rich get richer and more people are choosing between shelter, food, and health. Healthcare advancing and yet becoming inaccessible. Billions being pushed into motion — not as a choice, but as forced displacement — because of climate, because livelihoods are collapsing, because resources are weaponized. And then the endless scroll: one clip after another, right in front of your face, every minute, every second… sleepless nights, restless days.
 
So when you asked for 64 letters of hope, courage, action, and love — my first reaction was: yes. Not as a “nice idea,” but as something quietly radical. And who has the time?
 
Because what you’re really doing is interrupting that flood.
 
You’re creating a daily practice of turning toward life — not in denial, not in naïve positivity, but in a grounded insistence that human beings are more than the worst headlines. That we can still choose words that build steadiness. That we can still speak to each other like we’re worth saving. That we can still call forth the part of us that refuses to surrender to numbness.
 
And there’s something else that makes your invitation even more powerful: the 64 days themselves.
 
From January 30 — the day Mahatma Gandhi was killed — to April 4 — the day Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was killed — those 64 days sit like a bridge between two lives that called humanity back to itself. Two different contexts, two different histories, but the same moral nerve: that love is not weakness, that nonviolence is not passivity, and that dignity is not negotiable.

And yet… what I find myself realizing as I sit with that bridge is this: they were never truly killed.
 
They live on, don’t they? Shall do. For eternity.
 
Not as statues or slogans — but as a spirit that keeps returning, even when the world looks like it’s forgetting. The spirit that says: peace must win, and will win —  in our hearts. The spirit that keeps nudging ordinary people like us back toward silent everyday courage in ordinary moments.
 
Those 64 days become, in that sense, a daily reminder of what we practice — not in theory, but in the texture of everyday life: love, compassion, care, relationship, humanity. In the small decisions, the daily interactions, the seconds where we choose to soften instead of harden, to help instead of withdraw, to listen instead of dismiss, to repair instead of retaliate.
 
And this writing also reminds us to pause, celebrate and give gratitude — to this earth, to nature, to our fellow human beings, to family and friends, this beautiful life. To remember there are still a million reasons to be helpful, grateful, and yes — to rejoice.
 
A simple thought or act of compassion, a joyful smile to a passerby, a small act of courage to stand for what is right, not just right for us but right for others, for all. There is so much to celebrate, for so many of us are here – not giving up, stand -up and getting counted, peacefully, in hope, with dignity and humility.
 
Hope is not a mood; it’s truly a practice. And peace, in its deepest sense, never dies. It’s our natural place to return to — in life, and beyond it.
 
Thank you for reminding — from Gandhi to Dr. Martin, and yes, perhaps also our very beloved Mandela: brothers of different mothers, cut from the same cloth, each in their own way insisting that the arc of history only bends when human beings keep putting their hands on it.
 
So, I end up writing a long meandering one. Sorry. Well, you asked!
 
Guess, one who tries to meet this moment without flinching, and insists on love, on courage, and on the stubborn possibility of peace – interrupts that insanity with hope.

Warm regards,
​
Anuj
(Anuj Jain, Antigonish, Nova Scotia)