How you can have both your apples and chocolate: on balancing discipline and flexibility… Read the rest of this entry »
At Knowmads, we’ll take dancing over talking any day. During the opening ceremony of the IDEC conference, a balanced blend of tribal dancing and discussion opened not just the event, but also my eyes and heart to the value that democratic education can add to our world.
Asking the question ‘if education is in the hands of only a few, who will be the wave breaker that will bring the necessary change needed for the 21st century?’ It’s far easier to fight for your principles than to live by them. The change does not start with you, it starts with me. Read that sentence as a personal statement, and I believe we have something here. What I believe we have here is a commitment to personal responsibility, leadership, and awareness that is necessary to dance your way into a movement. However, as individuals we can only serve the system. The advantage to democratic education is that there exists an alternative path, a path that we can navigate for both ourselves and together.
Entering this new century, it’s clear the systems we once knew are changing. Taking the so-called economic crisis as an example, it’s clear that these systems are collapsing as we know them when the emphasis is placed on hierarchy instead of being built from the bottom up, starting with YOU, or depending on how you look at it, ME. Traditional education is a perfect reflection of modern society as we’ve come to know and dislike it.
Three themes can be seen to mark this momentous milestone in the world as we know it:
1. Socio-economic change
In other words, limited resources become unlimited. The individual becomes infinite in knowledge and capability to lead their own life and recognizes that change=me. (I am) What limits us is money and when we develop the necessary tools to combine our own unique capabilities and differences in order to fully contribute who we are to the world, we are able to unify, create change, and also materialize the necessary wealth to achieve whatever we choose to bring into the world.
2. Alternative vs. Mainstream/Institutional
Essentially, it’s not about non-conformity, rather re-conformity. No one is right and no one is wrong. Through working with existing establishments and meeting somewhere in the middle everyone is left satisfied with the desired change needed to overcome obstacles and challenges we face together on this planet. However, connecting with like-minded people to work with and develop these things has never been easier thanks to…
3. The Internet.
The bottom line? Every individual on this planet is unique and has something to offer that no one else can. Through connecting, collaborating, and creating, we are left with something just a little better than before.
Stay tuned as we keep dancing here in Tel Aviv. The beat goes on!
You’re beginning to ask bigger questions of yourself and the world you are encountering along the way. Suddenly, you ask of yourself: What do I really want to get out of this journey?
Up until then, you feel that you were merely stumbling around without actually paying attention to making sure that each foot went after the other. Your feet still stumble, but at least you attempt to be more aware of it. You have faith that those feet will keep taking you forward…
I like to call it {abroad} way of thinking…
I left on my own pilgrimage in search of my passion. I wanted to grow as a writer, but also as a person. I wanted to find my story in the telling.
What you say and do, how you communicate, are merely your forms of expressing yourself. Information gets lost, ‘in translation’. It begins taking on new dimensions from the completely unique perceptions each individual applies to some very universal concepts. In other words, everyone has their own definition of the truth and each individual must define it for themselves. It makes the world go round. It’s how things are created, innovated, imagined, and explored. It’s the art of dreaming and the science of doing. It’s understanding that everyone is in search of their own truth, and no two truths will be the same.
Disappearing from the world and into myself, I was able to begin to express where my heart was. I needed long-term solitude free of everyday distractions that were keeping me from knowing where my path should lead me. I realized I couldn’t possibly “know”, but I could always be experiencing.
After walking over 400 kilometers, I felt an amazing sense of accomplishment. However, The feeling was soon followed by an immediate sense of emptiness. A feeling that the journey was somehow over.
After a little over a week interacting with people as little as possible, I was beginning to feel a lot more comfortable in solitude. I was also beginning to see it in my writing, or rather, my confidence to do so. My confidence to create. Not just create writing, but create whatever and whoever I wanted to be, to live life in a new and exciting way. I was finally aware that there were infinite possibilities and if I was open to creating them, I could really begin to change who I was into who I want to be.
I began feeling happier. I felt a sense of newfound clarity breathing in fresh mountain air and carrying everything I owned on my back. Each step brought me closer to my destination, and one foot couldn’t go before the other. It was a practice in meditation on all levels. It was simple. Time didn’t seem to matter and was broken up by eating, writing, thinking, and not thinking. From one village to the next. From morning to night.
“never trust a thought that didn’t come by walking”
-nietzsche
I had a big question looming on my mind as I embarked on the journey. Where is the path taking me next? I was unsure if moving to a city full of vices was really what I was looking for. Wasn’t I supposed to travel the world? Wasn’t I supposed to spend a spontaneously simple life out of a backpack meeting new faces without any schedule or plan? It almost seemed as if I was just throwing the towel in and letting whatever happened… well, happen. Which, don’t get me wrong, isn’t a bad thing. As a matter of fact, It’s how I found myself here in Amsterdam, actually.
There is a big difference between leading your life and letting your life lead you, and I was beginning to see that I was going wrong because of one major problem. I was letting things just “happen” to me instead of actually making things “happen.” The problem was that I didn’t know how to make my life really be what I pictured it to be. I was staring at a blank canvas and hoping the Mona Lisa would just appear. In a perfect world, maybe. But we don’t live in a perfect world and I hope that’s why you’re reading this right now. Because you actually believe you can do something about it.
It’s by taking one step after the other, one stroke of the paintbrush at a time and being open to changing course when you think you were meant to do something else. It’s being open to yourself that will give you the answers and there is simply no possible way you can know what you’re supposed to do except for this very moment that, in this case, you have dedicated to yourself to in this moment, reading this very blog. It’s a choice that you’ve made. Fortunately, I can not tell you how to make any choice in your life.
It’s fortunate that we have that freedom to make those decisions for ourselves, because nobody knows you better than you do. No matter how much people love you, you understand that no one but yourself can possibly know what is best for you and it is important to take that time in solitude to evaluate yourself as an individual free from any job, person, thing, obstacle, or limit.
It’s about taking the time to take care of your garden instead of thinking someone else will take care of it for you, or furthermore, that it will take care of itself.
Last week, I met one of the world’s most renowned and influential conductors in recent years. A charming and quirky Israeli gentleman by the name of Itay, a Hebrew word meaning “with me”, brought all of us together “with him” during a very lively and interactive lecture at Knowmads headquarters. I was left speechless, frankly, and if you know me you understand that this is a next to impossible challenge to tackle. True to his message of compassionate leadership, he showed a great deal of interest in each and every one in the room as we explored our relationships to music, each other, and life. I close this brief post with a link to Itay’s speech on TED and with words from the man himself:
“Joy is about enabling other people’s stories to be heard at the same time.”
I couldn’t have found a more fitting definition of true tribal leadership.
The ninety two year old and wildly alive owner of Shakespeare & Company, George Whitman, requires a one page autobiography be written by everyone who stays in his library. Below is the one I wrote. George lives in a small apartment above the store. The place is a clutter of books, newspapers and autobiographies written by the 70,000 plus others who came before me.
Hunting is a rite of passage for young men in my town. I was raised on ice fishing and skiing on the border of Canada and a large lake. It was a small town called International Falls with the unofficial expression: “if you don’t know what you’re doing, at least somebody else does.” It was there that I discovered that, although I didn’t pass deer-season weekends at a hunting shack, I was still a hunter. Fortunately, my territory was much closer to home and full of much easier prey.
I served up coffee on the weekends at the only cafe our little town claimed smack dab in the middle of our historic “downtown.” Those long winter days were spent hunting for things I consider superior even to deer. What I hunted for were stories. About people. Who they were and what they were about, and what made them that way. I was fascinated by the history that the quaintly decrepite building held not just in its own stories echoing into the tin ceiling, but also in the stories of the people who had seen it so differently.
My coming of age wasn’t when I killed my first large buck, but rather when I heard a story of the most recent local student who had studied abroad, a completely new concept for me. It had been almost ten years since International Falls had sent a student away. Upon inquiry, I happened to meet the man in charge of the local foreign exchange program who, like the majority of locals, I actually already knew from childhood. However, I never envisioned him as a man who could get me a ticket out of there!
Soon, I was on a plane to Torrevieja, Spain, to experience the Spanish culture that I could only imagine through reading. I felt more a citizen of the world after leaving and was lucky enough to be accepted to a boarding school for the arts to pursue a passion in theatre. It was a relief knowing that I would be returning to a metropolitan environment instead of a town with a ratio of 7,000 hockey sticks to zero theatre. It was there that I discovered storytelling and creating with its elements. I fell in love that year with Shakespeare, Chekhov, and a girl. It was where I discovered sex and we rehearsed it together whenever we could.
Closing that chapter on my life, I determined that there is more to my life than just experiencing the steps that many walk in without any clear direction. I decided to postpone my planned studies in New York. Two weeks from now, I will be on a plane headed to Mumbai, India to help those less fortunate than myself. Above all, I am a hunter. I am a listener, I am a teller. I know there are too many unheard voices in India and the rest of the world. These are voices that must be heard. I want to give a voice to the voiceless.
Whatever this future holds for me, I want to leave it knowing that I made it just a little better than the way I found it. Thank you, George, for doing the same. Thank you for making this world just a little bit better. Thank you for giving me a place to rest my head. Last, but definitely not least, thank you for the opportunity to tell my story.
Keep on hunting.
As I reflect on my experience, I recognize that while Spain first taught me to enjoy life, it has now also reinforced in me the need for balance in order to live a truly fulfilling life. It’s no surprise this lesson comes from a country that clocks in some of the highest hours of labor in all of Europe, yet still makes time for a daily siesta! I’ve stopped hiking, but I am still “on the trail.” I believe that the pilgrimage never really ends as I look at the trail ahead; a path of self-growth on all levels with an opportunity to plant some seeds for the future. Here’s my process of beginning my path as a progressive pilgrim. Give it a try with me, if you want.
When I was first here in Rotterdam, some questions began springing up inside of me. You see, it all started reading about these things called goals. I’d had some long term ones written in the back of my notebook, but had never given it much thought beyond that. So, I decided I’d write another list of goals for my travels. I realized I’d never actually given a tremendous amount of thought as to what I wanted out of this journey. I then realized that a lot of people don’t really take the time to plan what they really want to get out of life. Read the rest of this entry »
