quote of the week
nov 2 – nov 8
“With patience, tangled cord may be undone, and problems which seem insoluble, resolved.”
-Lao Tzu
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Tags: taoism, zen
first snowflakes
The snow is finally piling up in the mountains of western Canada – and I am eagerly anticipating the first turns of the season.
Skiing has played a very interesting role in my life; inexistent, a focal point, frustrating, defining… but most importantly it was liberating. There was a period in my life when coping with understanding who I was needed to be grounded in something. I believe that everyone seeks a little bit of their self-identity in the activities that occupy their time. For me, skiing was a good way to find out who I was (and wasn’t). It was a big part of the reason I originally moved out to Vancouver, and led to a series of events which evidently defined significant aspects of my life. However there was a time when I believed it could elucidate me completely as a person, and this was not the case.
Skiing’s true value for me comes from the sense of freedom I feel when I am in the mountains. The euphoric high of standing on top of a mountain cannot be compared to anything else. The ability to escape from the clutter of the fast paced world around us and live in a single, breathtaking moment is indescribable and priceless. Skiing cannot be a focal point for me because it would destroy the natural beauty of one of the few non-goal driven activities in my life.
Skiing simply is… and that is enough.
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Tags: reflection, skiing
the element
I just finished a wonderful book by a wonderful man named Sir Ken Robinson. I heard Sir Ken speak @ UBC a few weeks ago, ordered a copy of the book off amazon, and read it cover-to-cover, and was I ever glad I did. Sir Ken does an extraordinary job of correcting the misconceptions we have about intelligence and the value of finding your personal “element”. Anyone who considers themselves a teacher or mentor will have a lot to learn from this book about helping other people to bring out their passions.
You can check out his TED talk on why school kills creativity here (yes, its made a few “top” lists). The man is really amazing, and at 250 pages or so his book is well worth your time.
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Tags: books, element, zen
quote of the week
oct 26 – nov 1
“A leader is best when people barely know he exists, when his work is done, his aim fulfilled, they will say: we did it ourselves.”
-Lao Tzu
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Tags: quotes, taoism, zen
birthday wisdom
I have never been a big believer in age as an indicator of much. However, I was reading the other day that the peak years of your mind are between the ages of 25-29 or so. After that your brain’s “wisdom” begins to grow as a process of slow degradation causes lapses in high intensity areas of your mind as neurons die out (this, in turn, actually causes certain parts of your brain to outsource jobs to other parts, ultimately contributing to a more holistic approach to accomplishing tasks, a process we have come to define as “wisdom”).
Turning 21 today means, for me… *drumroll please*… absolutely nothing. My contention is that 21 is the new 18 much like 70 is the new 50. We all have about a million more experiences waiting to be sought out in the years to come, and defining oneself by one’s age (or any other rigid parameters such as that) is just a self-imposed limitation on your happiness.
As Lao Tzu once so elegantly pointed out; “the journey of a thousand miles begins with one step”… and I will add that it is never too early or too late to start another journey.
May your next 365 days be another great chapter in that journey, I know mine will be.
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Tags: aging, reflection, taoism, zen
I don’t quite know when I made up my mind, but I do know it was sometime after I finished the gruelling two month slog of studying for the LSATs. The first week felt engaging as I dove through sample test after sample test, but after a while the entire process seemed to just slow down. I ended up toiling over what seemed to be endless repetition in an attempt to push my score just one point higher. The process worked (I was sitting in the low to mid 170s by the end of it), but I hated almost every minute of it.
For me law school is a cop-out. Sure it’s a safe bet for me, but I don’t really believe I would ever be happy as a lawyer. Friends have pushed me by saying that there are many things one can do with a law degree that don’t even come close to boring. To them I say this: “what is the opportunity cost of three years of your life in your mid twenties?” – to me, it’s substantial.
So if not law school, what then? The degree I’ve chosen (Political Science, with a potential minor in Economics), although acutely interesting at times, does not lend itself well to my strengths, interests, or motivations. But I need to find an alternative, not just to pay the bills, but to fulfil myself as an individual.
More than anything the problem lies in how you want to go about changing the world around you, and what it is the motivates you. For me, its people, and ideas that have revolutionary potential. Almost organically out of that conclusion flows the life path of a social entrepreneur. (For those readers that don’t know what a social entrepreneur is: http://bit.ly/2VnuOJ)
What I don’t know is just quite how to get there… yet.
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Tags: law school, lsat, reflection
