Resilience and the Road Ahead: What Illness Taught Me About Wanting Life Again
A journey from stillness to streets, and the virtues I found along the way.
From Collapse to Clarity
There was a moment not long ago when I thought I was dying.
My body was shutting down, as if it had quietly reached its breaking point.
I was hospitalized for three weeks, disconnected from the very things that keep me alive: my work, my passions, my people.
And I truly believed I might not walk out. If the disease wouldn't kill me, the isolation would.
And then, everything that seemed important: projects, deadlines, commitments... felt so meaningless.
What emerged in that terrifying silence was as simple as it was overwhelming:
I still want to live.
I still want to walk down unfamiliar streets.
I still want to meet people, share ideas, feel the wind, taste a new dish, sit under a tree in a park.
There is so much I still want to do.
What Resilience Really Means
That longing to live, to exist in this world, to move, to evolve, was how I experienced resilience rising from my core.
Resilience is the recovery of meaning. It is pushing through hardship with faith that there is still more to do and be.
It is refusing to give up even when everything seems lost.
To be resilient doesn’t mean to just have the capacity to go on. It means to rise again with intention even if that capacity seems absent.
It means to hold the bigger picture in mind when the present moment is nothing but a source of pain.
Resilience is saying: “This is not where my story ends.”
Resilience is fierce devotion to possibility.
Virtues from the Road
So I took a long pause.
And I've been travelling. Not to escape my reality, but to reencounter with life, with humanity, with the miracle of still having a body that carries me.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be sharing reflections on my travels.
Each post will explore a different city I visited during this journey, and the virtue I experienced most profoundly in that place.
What is a virtue?
I define it as a quality of our being that reflects moral strength and inner truth. It is a way of existing that aligns us with what is good and just.
Virtues guide our choices, shape our character, and reveal what’s best in our human nature.
They are always positive, and though we may not live in them constantly, we always carry the seed of them within us, waiting to be cultivated.
Cities, as agglomerations of people shaped by unique histories, values, and rhythms, often reflect certain virtues more vividly than others.
If we learn to attune to them, not just as tourists, but as moral observers, we can receive powerful lessons about the human spirit.
When I travel, I stay in each city for at least a week. I walk its streets. I live among its people. I eat their food, use their transport, breathe their air. I often ask myself:
How different would I be if I had lived my life through this city’s lens?
Tourist attractions are enjoyable, but what touches me most is the everyday heartbeat of a place: rushing commuters, café conversations, graffiti on old walls, children playing in parks.
I want to feel, if only for a few moments, what it means to belong to that place. To merge into the flow of its humanity.
And of course, I also spend time with nature. Because unlike society, nature has no borders, no biases, no judgment. It just is.
What used to feel like inconveniences: rain, cold, wind… now feel like life itself touching me. Even getting wet in the rain feels like a blessing.
This series will be a blend of personal reflection and practical insight on how we can all develop virtues wherever we are, whatever we’re going through.
The first post, coming soon, will begin with the virtue I found in Zurich.
Until then, remember this:
You don’t have to be unbroken to move forward.
You just have to be willing to rise with purpose and the belief that there is still more life to experience.
On this journey with you,
Alma