Well, hello there. It's Morgan Harper-Nichols here. I'm an artist and a writer, and this is a space

where I turn the lens on various topics and subjects in hopes to learn something new or see something in a new way.

Today's piece is called One Valuable Thing We Forget About Strength. Thank you so much for listening. A few weeks ago,

I painted this tiger. And in order to paint this tiger, I had to look at many reference

images of tigers. And I don't typically draw or illustrate that many animals. I used to when I was much

younger, but I'm starting to do it more because I learn a lot from animals and I also just

love drawing them. But one thing I noticed as I was looking at all of these images of tigers from around the world

is that the images I was drawn to were images where the tiger was simply just sitting still,

not in action, not jumping or running, just sitting still, kind of staring directly at the camera.

And the interesting thing about taking time to illustrate things is that you start to think about

them in different layers. And that's definitely what happened as I begin to look closer at this tiger.

And what I began to see is that as I began to draw this forward-facing tiger, this tiger that was

facing the camera, if you will, I began to ask myself, why does this tiger, to me, seem to represent so much strength

and encourage? And the tiger's not really doing anything other than just sitting there. And the

more I thought about it, the more I realized, this tiger doesn't have to do anything that

seems strong to others in order to possess and symbolize strength. Just by sitting there and

staring at the camera and being steel in the moment, that too is a sign of

strength. Just by being quiet, being the animal that it's supposed to be, being the creature

that it doesn't know about humans that study tigers, but just being the creature

that it's meant to be in that space, that symbolizes strength. And I began to think about,

wow, oh, what a gift it would be if we could see strength within ourselves

in the same way. Oftentimes, strength is associated with movement, with success, with overcoming

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