The good side of 6am?

Life is all about perception. Sometime getting up at 6am is great and feels invigorating, other times you wish 6am didn't exist. At times, being alone is peaceful and relaxing, other times its lonely and depressing. Sometimes being busy gives you a sense of purpose and accomplishment, satisfaction even. Other times you wish more than anything you could have free time. Two people can almost get hit by a bus. One perceives it as a near-death experience and has a life altering moment, thinking about how lucky he is to still be alive. The other adds it up to a bad day, and that life is nothing but one car accident after another. Your outlook makes the difference between enjoying yourself at the party, wishing you were elsewhere, and mopping at home missing it. I guess we all do need a sense of balance, and a bit of these things at one time or another. But, my question is, how can we get to seeing the good things? How can we alter our perception to enjoy the alone quiet time, to relish the sense of accomplishment in work, and to truly enjoy the moment that we're in, rather than hope and wait for the next good one?

Lately I've been trying my best to get to that other side.. I'll only be at this stage in my life, having these particular opportunities and moments, living this particular life once. So the question remains, how to live each day to the fullest? How to better appreciate what I have? I suppose that is the million dollar question in life though; how to live in the moment while still on a solid path to the future.

I would also like to apologize to my blog for neglecting it. When you're concerned about your legal status in a country, your place to live and whether you will continue to have one, your funding for paying tuition, rent, and groceries, and trying to keep up with classes, readings, and assignments, all while trying to keep a positive spirit about it, or at least have the will to get out of bed in the mornings, isn't exactly conducive to positive, critical thought and reflection, nor does it leave the time for it. Things have gotten better though. The light is at the end of the tunnel again, the end is near. In exactly 3 weeks I will be in landing in Winnipeg airport. Whether this is actually relieves the stress or is more stress inducing is another question.

One thing I do really love right now is this project for my Negotiation and Mediation class. We are partaking in a simulation of a multilateral negotiation. It is designed to be as realistic as possible. We were given an 11 pages document of general background information on the area in question, the 2 ethnic groups living there, short history of their past grievances, their present issue(s), all including all the actors that are involved. We are also given maps, statistics, municipal budgets, and project funding by particular actors and organisations. We're then given our private instructions as one of the actors in the situation. We're then to prepare for the meeting and mediation (which happens all day this Friday) completely in character. This involves studying the case, preparing interest tools, options chart, perception tools, alternatives assessments, and having bilateral meetings with parties involved to assess their interests and issues in order to better prepare for the meeting. Because as in a real life situation, our private instructions entail our perceptions of the situation, our issues, and our view on it. These can include correct information or false, can be misleading, and can be contradictory to other actors.

I was given the role of OUS representative, the Organisation of Unified States that is intervening in the conflict to replace the IMIO (another international organisation that stopped the violence). Today alone I have a meeting with a local NGO involved in the conflict at 12:30, the IMIO representative at 13:00, and the mediator from PSP conducting the mediation Friday at 14:00. I even got up at 6am this morning to have lots of time to get ready and prepare myself for the meetings. Let's just examine that again. I, me, got up, out of bed, awake, at 6 in the morning. Without having to get to work, being coerced, or woken up by anyone. I think that says something.. I mean, I love it. I could really see myself doing this, and I hope I will.

That is, provided that I eventually actually manage to get through all my other classes and assignments to finish my Masters.

"The richness of those perceptions and carnal experiences lies entirely in the ability to simply pay attention"

From Saint-Exupéry's the Little Prince: "Grown-ups love figures. When you tell them that you have made a new friend, they never ask you any questions about essential matters. They never say to you, “What does his voice sound like? What games does he love best? Does he collect butterflies?” Instead, they demand: “How old is he? How many brothers has he? How much does he weigh? How much money does his father make?” Only from these figures do they think they have learned anything about him.”


"Oscar Wilde frequently makes me laugh, particularly when I think of his “Only superficial people do not judge by appearances.” The bottom line is that the spirit, intelligence, kindness, sensuality - all that is good and joyous in the human being, does appear to the eye. From the eye to the eye. The richness of those perceptions and carnal experiences lies entirely in the ability to simply pay attention. The French don’t “pay” attention or “pay” visits (and other things I’ve forgotten). They “make / do” them."


"There is a line from a Michael Jackson song “I’m not going to spend my life being a colour.” I feel this about a great many things, and right now I’m thinking of age and I’m not going to spend my life adding up or attempting to not add up either. I don’t want to be “young” or “old”, dress young or old, do young or old. I’ve always been old and young simultaneously and still am. (I guess THAT adds up ...) For music too - there’s no need to get stuck on anything because there is both excellence and mediocrity in everything, in most genres. "

This morning, while I was supposed to be reading on the relations between religion and war, or even researching on the theoretical constructs of the conflict in Congo, I got caught up reading texts that were not written specifically to convey important pieces of information, or to add a body of literature to their respective field, but texts that were written for the sake of writing. Texts that were written for the love of words and language; to explore a particular idea or theory, but not necessarily contribute to it or critique it, rather just to marvel in it. You may wonder what was so different about these texts than any other blog or informal piece of literature on the internet. Probably nothing spectacular at first glance, but these articles were written by an academic, who chose a social networking site as a medium rather than an academic journal or forum. Again at first glance, the difference doesn't seem very noteworthy. Many people write for the sake of writing, but it is these slight differences in the style of writing (choice of vocabulary, style, structure or lack thereof, use of "I") and the freedom of the content itself that would have the piece deemed "inappropriate" for formal and academic functions, that makes it so wonderful and captivating. The medium itself then adds to the message.

Social networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, and many other sites on the internet were not designed to impart on you wisdom and knowledge that would contribute to your education and your life, they were designed to keep in contact with friends and loved ones at all times, regardless of distance. What happened though, is that these places turned in to forums for absolutely anyone to share thoughts and ideas with a potentially limitless audience, a luxury that was previously reserved for a select minority. We then got exposed to a flood of theories, ideas, comments and critiques on a daily basis. We had to start consciously and subconsciously filtering all this information in to categories of actual knowledge and wisdom, and that of opinions. We started to discern what is actual knowledge we should absorb, and what isn't. What is important to know, and what is not. What is important to think about, and what is not. As a result, to save time and effort, many people consider the internet as a whole, as an unreliable source of information. Many people think that true knowledge, knowledge that we should pay attention to comes out of text books and scholarly articles; concrete things. And most importantly, things we have to pay for. I mean clearly, we have entire institutions that charge exorbitant amounts of money to have you read information out of texts and scholarly articles for a year, and then deem you to be more learned than before. What is sometimes forgotten though, is the fact that true wisdom, the kind of wisdom that shakes the very foundation of your being, can come from a homeless man on the street. It can come from a five year old child. It can come from your grandfather. It can come from a children's novel. It can even come from Facebook, the place were the world meets. What matters is not the form in which information is presented, but rather our ability to "pay" attention and our ability to absorb things around us and to think critically about them, regardless the source. And what is Facebook if not a medium to convey our every thought about the world around us? Being in a Masters program, it's really refreshing to read a very well written, completely founded, and intriguing thought, not out of my dozens of stacks of articles, but off of Facebook.

The 3 excerpts I chose above were taken from notes on Facebook written by Helena da Silva. Two of which were written in response to and to simply marvel in the thoughts imparted by Clarice Lispector and her novel Agua Viva. Although I didn't take any of the references to Lispector herself or to her novel, I chose to share these three citations because I find them fascinating and I couldn't agree with them more.