I must say, I never felt so pregnant with ideas and thoughts from one source. It took me all week to think of what I want to share with the class, and still while we first started and Dr. Joyanne commenced to ask us what are some of the things we took out from the presentations I was still lost and said the first thing that came to my mind. I must admit that thought is long gone and got mixed by all the other thoughts my classmates shared, but the only thing that remains is love. I strongly believe that love conquers everything. If I love the person in front of me for who they are and I feel no threat from them. What has been going on around the world is the effect of threat that is being felt. People go around with a motto to guard yourself and protect from any harm. This is what they are doing, they guard and push back as strong as they can. Many religions have spoken about unconditional love so I believe we have a clear example of that, but we as humans put restrictions to that claiming it is impossible. If it is not impossible, people make it impossible because when you love unconditionally they hurt you back, thus the feelings of guarding and protecting yourself emerge.
One of my most successful classes which I am still teaching, the same group of kids for the past 3 years is a class that is based on independence. I have reached a mutual understanding with the kids for knowing why they are here, what they need to learn from here and how they can search, and extract knowledge on their own. When that stage was completed now, I am simply a facilitator. In addition to that, I created a bond of love between us all. We care and love for each other to an extend that goes beyond the class. If we want to make a difference then we have to be the difference ourselves. We talk, we argue about reform but we don't reform ourselves. The main question remains, to which extend am I willing to reform myself? For how long will I keep doing that? I believe our main problem is that we have guarded ourselves for so long that we forgot how to open up.
When wanting to teach others about diversity, social justice, equality, reflection, technology we need to step down from our pedestals and get our hands dirty. We like to live in a world of grey, where we can always question and say that what is right and wrong is not really distinguished but it all falls under the umbrella of uncertainty. It helps us to do what we want to do without feeling guilty about it. We like to talk about things but when we hit the reality check button we back off, we stop, we think it over. We might as well get used to being objected to, ridiculed, threatened, because when we decide to really step up and talk about those topics and implement them in reality, people will not like it.
What we are doing in Humanity and our made up countries, is very similar to the story Lord of the Flies, where a bunch of boys got stranded on an island after a shipwreck and they created a society on this island. They came up with laws and ideas which seemed very reasonable, but in the end, it all ended in brutality. What was astonishing is how this ended up being the norm. They forgot what was right and things just went down from there. This is what's happening to society. The idea we need to keep in mind when we are creating Humanity is that how will we deal with corruption, how will we keep those ideologies from being forgotten? People not only need love, but understanding even to those who are fighting against them, the mean ones.
I would like to end with this picture. What we want is to look in the mirror and see things in the correct way, but lets not be fooled into the correct way by taking the short cuts and the fastest and easiest solutions. Dig deep, work hard and don't give up!
One of my most successful classes which I am still teaching, the same group of kids for the past 3 years is a class that is based on independence. I have reached a mutual understanding with the kids for knowing why they are here, what they need to learn from here and how they can search, and extract knowledge on their own. When that stage was completed now, I am simply a facilitator. In addition to that, I created a bond of love between us all. We care and love for each other to an extend that goes beyond the class. If we want to make a difference then we have to be the difference ourselves. We talk, we argue about reform but we don't reform ourselves. The main question remains, to which extend am I willing to reform myself? For how long will I keep doing that? I believe our main problem is that we have guarded ourselves for so long that we forgot how to open up.
When wanting to teach others about diversity, social justice, equality, reflection, technology we need to step down from our pedestals and get our hands dirty. We like to live in a world of grey, where we can always question and say that what is right and wrong is not really distinguished but it all falls under the umbrella of uncertainty. It helps us to do what we want to do without feeling guilty about it. We like to talk about things but when we hit the reality check button we back off, we stop, we think it over. We might as well get used to being objected to, ridiculed, threatened, because when we decide to really step up and talk about those topics and implement them in reality, people will not like it.
I would like to end with this picture. What we want is to look in the mirror and see things in the correct way, but lets not be fooled into the correct way by taking the short cuts and the fastest and easiest solutions. Dig deep, work hard and don't give up!
I see the theme of "the (wo)man in the mirror" is reflected in all of your chosen images and how we see what we want to see, in the way we want to see it. Sometimes we have to "see" with more than our eyes. We need to see with our heart.
ReplyDeleteI am a very reflective person. i always take stops to reflect on my life, decisions, paths, problems to be able to see where I should go from this day on, am I on the right track? What did I learn? those are some of the questions I usually ask myself. This reflection happens often and I call it Carol's Day, where I spend the day doing things I enjoy and reflecting on my life alone. I do enjoy the solitude on that day.
Deletethose pictures speak a thousand words to me. many times we need to look at ourselves.. not just in the mirror, but right inside, in the depth of the heart.. to see where have i been and where i am going.
ReplyDelete