Sometimes I think the reason I’m so bad at sleeping early is because I feel there’s so much life still to be lived.
Musings of a sappy optimist
RSSBe careful the environment you choose for it will shape you; be careful the friends you choose for you will become like them.
-
W. Clement Stone
Important Career Advice
Every week, sometimes every day, someone writes to me asking for advice about the career they should take. I can’t, unfortunately, respond to them all, so I thought I should try to formulate some general guidelines, which I hope people will be able to adapt to their own circumstances. This advice applies only to those […]
“The third approach is tougher, but just as valid. It is followed by people who have recognised the limitations of any form of engagement with mainstream employers, and who have created their own outlets for their work. Most countries have a number of small alternative papers and broadcasters, run voluntarily by people making their living by other means: part time jobs, grants or social security. These are, on the whole, people of tremendous courage and determination, who have placed their beliefs firmly ahead of their comforts. To work with them can be a great privilege and inspiration, for the simple reason that they – and, by implication, you – are free while others are not. All the money, all the prestige in the world will never make up for the loss of your freedom.
So my final piece of advice is this: when faced with the choice between engaging with reality or engaging with what Erich Fromm calls the “necrophiliac” world of wealth and power, choose life, whatever the apparent costs may be. Your peers might at first look down on you: poor Nina, she’s twenty-six and she still doesn’t own a car. But those who have put wealth and power above life are living in the world of death, in which the living put their tombstones – their framed certificates signifying acceptance to that world – upon their walls. Remember that even the editor of the Times, for all his income and prestige, is still a functionary, who must still take orders from his boss. He has less freedom than we do, and being the editor of the Times is as good as it gets.
You know you have only one life. You know it is a precious, extraordinary, unrepeatable thing: the product of billions of years of serendipity and evolution. So why waste it by handing it over to the living dead?”
If you’re lucky enough not to have big debt, then get lost. In the world. In a big city. In a forest. And in service to others. Lose yourself to find yourself.
- UCB Professor Daniel Mulhern’s response to the question: What advice do you have for those who still don’t know what they’ll be doing after graduation?
Learn from everyone, follow no one, watch for patterns, work like hell.
- Scott McCloud
Despite the fact that teaching is something I’m passionate about, sometimes working in education can be a really thankless and frustrating job. I don’t know what it was, if it’s been the hours spent preparing logistics for AP Exams and realizing how much teachers put in for me while I was in school, or my 9th graders being ungrateful, unproductive, and full of attitude during study hall, or being exhausted from lack of sleep, or the incredibly fun and freeing after school session of choir where we sang Seasons and Love and Let me Love You and held hands and did dance moves together, or the fact that I got to catch up with an old friend last night on the phone, and talk to my former choir teacher about summer plans until 1:30am or the fact that my friend’s birthday was yesterday and she was exhausted but still made time to write a thoughtful email back to me, or perhaps reading Robert Reich’s, my former professor, status update about graduation/post-grad advice:
“Q: How do you remember feeling when you were about to graduate?
A: Apprehensive. The Vietnam War was raging and I didn’t know if I’d be drafted. America’s cities were burning in the aftermath of Dr. King’s assassination. Bobby Kennedy had been killed. Everything looked like it was going to hell.
Q: Do you have any other words of advice for this year’s graduates?
A: Don’t be cynical about America or your capacity to change it – or to change the world. We need your energy. We need your idealism. You will make a difference.”
Or if it was simply just this beautiful video…but I got a little bit choked up seeing the simple, typically unrecognized acts of kindness people do every day, in our backyards and around the world. There are so many reasons to feel down, think selfishly, give up hope, focus on security and stability instead of risk for vulnerability, humility, passion, and love. So many reasons the world could and should stop turning, why our imperfect society should fail, and yet the world keeps spinning, we keep living and beautiful things continue to happen every single day.
Here to Listen Boston: Harvard Square
Good times.
I think it’s time to bring Here to Listen to Boston
Joy can be real only if people look on their life as a service, and have a definite object in life outside themselves and their personal happiness.
-
Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy
At the end of everyday at Match, everyone fills out a Zoomerang which is basically a survey/feedback form on how every period of your day went. Though it’s become routine and almost mechanical at times, a sort of forced reflection that we just try to get done, it is also an opportunity to center ourselves and remind ourselves what actually happened over the course of one day. Before each Zoom, there’s a different quotation. I’ll have to ruminate on this one…
How did we get here?
I asked a friend what motivates her to serve in developing countries. She responded and returned the question, and that got me off onto a whirlwind of thoughts. What motivates me, why am I here in Boston trying to empower low-income urban high school students while making below minimum wage and living with 37 other people on top of the school?
Summer 2009, I met Stephen Leek while volunteering at Crystal Choir’s concert camp. Since then, his words wisdom have stayed with me and influenced the way I try to teach and the way I live.
“Always give 100%”
When asked when and why he chose to become a choral conductor
“I never decided to become a conductor, I just kept doing what I loved and took on new opportunities, and here I am”
He was the first guest conductor who legitimately wanted to hang out with the kids and singers even when he wasn’t teaching. He stayed late to watch all the skits from groups, went to the beach with us and bought giant turkey legs to eat and made faces at kids. He connected me with one of his past students who was very accomplished and well-traveled
9/11/09, 2nd year of college, His student’s advice:
“Definitely think you should aim big while you’re young. My top recommendation would be to get out of the USA as soon as possible and experience more of the developing world. Some ideas…
· Volunteer in Africa for 12 months – try to take a leadership position in helping to develop micro-businesses/micro-franchises
· Volunteer in India for 12 months – as above
Taking 12 months out from study may seem like a lot of time but when you look back it will be the best decision you ever made.”
Saw the advice and scoffed at the idea that I could last in a foreign country for 12 months. Brushed the idea off as unrealistic, but the seed was planted.
2nd semester, Spring 2010, I had no idea what I was going to choose as a major / what I wanted to do post-grad so I reached out to a particularly hard-working GSI. Turns out he was pretty well-traveled himself, had gone to all 7 continents by his early/mid 30s. We got lunch, talked, exchanged emails. He gave me wonderful advice and said something that I will never forget:
“Give the idea some thought. Whether or not it sounds a little daunting from where you sit at the moment, I think it would be tremendous life experience and one that you’ll look back on as a formative moment in your life. There’s a certain restlessness about you, Oliver—and I mean that in the best possible sense—and it’s a restlessness that isn’t going to go away with more of the same of what you’ve been doing. I think you know that.”
Ghana that summer changed my life, not because I made a huge impact on anyone else, but because I learned a lot more about myself, how lonely I initially felt without my community and my social media. But I also learned how people are happy without the amenities I take for granted, and I could be happy just being myself, doing nothing more than just sitting on the porch on a sunny day, having a conversation and munching on groundnuts. Ghana stripped away the inessential frivolities of 1st world living and the essential, the beautiful, more natural and truthful way of living steadily became more apparent.
Fast-forward, GPP minor, Perspectives and interfaith dialogues within InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, Here to Listen, travels to India to volunteer at Shanti Bhavan, singing tours in China and Taiwan to graduation, countless instances of love, support, inspiration, acts of kindness, learning moments and even a commencement speech, the highlight of my sparse academic achievements that summed up the significance of my college education.
I haven’t even gotten to what motivates me, but just thinking about this journey and the random connections and opportunities, and I get a glimpse of understanding of what Stephen Leek meant, when we do what we love and follow our heart, it’s not about sitting down and analyzing pros, cons, and interests, it’s waking up each morning and choosing to do something you love, to stay positively restless and yet content with a modest material lifestyle that’s rich with passion and loved ones. How did we even get here? We are so lucky.
About Musings of a sappy optimist
