At just 17 years old, Malala Yousafzay, a Pakistani children’s and educational rights activist, just became the youngest person to win the Nobel Peace Prize this morning. The Prize was awarded to fellow children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi, of India.
Malala, like many of you reading this post, got her start as a blogger – at the tender age of 11. Writing pseudonymously for the BBC, she documented her life under the Taliban’s regime in Pakistan. Her powerful words brought her international press attention, and ultimately, made her a marked girl.
Just two years and one day ago today, as she boarded a bus on her way to school (a rare privilege in her village in the Swat Valley), a man called her by name. When she turned to him, he fired three shots at her, one bullet hitting her in the head. After hours of surgery and a medically-induced coma, Malala survived the assassination attempt.
Rather than go into hiding with a Taliban bounty on her head, Malala did something even more profound:
She spoke out. She kept writing. She kept speaking with the press, communities and even world leaders including Queen Elizabeth, President Obama, and at the United Nations – advocating for women’s and children’s rights. She co-founded her own organization, the Malala Fund, empowering women and girls through access to education.
She wasn’t about to let a silly thing like an assassination attempt stop her from making a difference in her community – and even in communities of oppressed women and children around the world.
Malala teaches us all a very important lesson, one that we can carry with us through any journey, battle, trial, or obstacle thrown at us in life. She survived the Taliban’s bullet with her name on it. She survived their oppression, their rhetoric, their bans and decrees.
Her story teaches us hope.
And that, my friends, is one very dangerous weapon in the eyes of those who would erase her name from memory.
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Let hope be your weapon. Not your balloon, not your safety net – not even your shield. Strike through all that would assail you with hope as your weapon. Wield it with impunity. Wield it without shame, forgiveness, or fear.
Let hope be your blade, your bullet, your arrow. May hope find its mark, and may its mark be true.
May all that would defeat you tremble at your might.
