07/07/2023

Available for over a year

A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Yousra Samir Imran, a British Egyptian writer and author Good morning. As an author and journalist who reviews books, I am very fortunate to receive advance copies of upcoming books from publishing companies, in particular Young Adult fiction. I was recently reading one teenage novel for review and couldn’t help but laugh to myself at the things the fourteen-year-old female protagonist considered matters of life and death, such as being invited to a party, or who commented on her TikTok video. Without meaning to, I thought, “what petty things they are!” But then I paused for a moment and thought – wasn’t I once a teenager? Weren’t these things once very serious matters for me too, things that caused me real worry, anxiety and even sadness? As an adult it’s easy to look at young people and wonder why it is they get so upset over things we consider small or silly. The truth is, at each stage of your life, your problems, no matter what they are, feel very real and very big to you, whether it’s the disappointment a three-year-old feels when being told “no” to buying a random object at the shops, or the fear a thirteen-year-old feels when wearing new glasses to school. This young adult novel served as a good reminder that everyone’s problems are valid. Dear God, the Most Compassionate, the Supreme Solver of all problems, please grant us empathy so that we value and do not invalidate other people’s problems. Ameen.