Project Malaysia 2014: My Thoughts!

This is a little blurb I wrote, at the end of the South East Asian Leadership Network (SEALNet)'s Project Malaysia 2014 which I was involved in, as a form of reflection that our team leader encouraged us to do.  It definitely is far from everything I have gained and experienced from the trip but it'll give you a snippet of the ridiculous two weeks that occurred.  This was my fundraising page that perhaps shows my excitement in the focus of education and leadership in this project--something very close to my heart.  Enjoy the pictures too! :D

Upon arriving at KLIA 2!

At the beginning of this project, we were asked to think about what we want to learn about ourselves.  If there is one thing I learned from this project, it would be that true learning never happens in one direction.  I came into this hoping to help others learn but walked out of Project Malaysia 2014 having learnt just as much from the people I have met, if not more.  My team mates, the 4S high school students, friends from Rita Home, and the unassuming stories I have found in them have been the source of my greatest lessons.

I remember a particularly rough late-night discussion between the SEALNet team—we were all beyond sleep-deprived, worried about the next day’s workshop plan, and planning to call it an early night.

But upon receiving unsettling news that challenged our initial plan for the Rita kids, there was something in the refusal of the entire team to call it a night in the midst of all the sweat, tears, and frustration at their peaks that made me smile—their passion, resilience, and how much heart they sincerely had to offer the mentees, our friends from Rita, and this entire project through their actions inspired  me to keep improving myself.

Says it all.

Having been a Malaysian high school student before and having watched my team mates in action, I have found the beauty in always trying to meet the students wherever they’re at—forging genuine friendships with them instead of acting as a superior to them.

Just thought I'd include our selfie with the monkey.

Dancing the macarena as we entered the Rita home.

I remember meeting a high school student by chance, who wasn’t initially part of PM’14.  He told me his interest in being involved but explained his low self-esteem in his ability to speak English.  I wasn’t sure where this would lead to but took a chance and kept talking to him and encouraged him to keep coming back, at first in Malay, and then, slowly with some English.  His occasional visits turned into regular ones and soon, he actually became part of the official team!  After interacting with more and more of the mentors, he was able to find the courage to tell an entire story of his high school life in English! 

His family!

Also, I recall one of the usually quiet workshop periods when we opened the floor to ideas and comments.  I remember my mentee quietly whispering to me, “I think I should say something. I’m going to raise my hand.” My eyes grew wide and unblinking, trying to suppress the excitement and pride I felt at that very moment, “Yes, yes, go, go!” And she did it.  She spoke up.  I was beyond beaming.

WATERMELONNNNNNNN
defined part of me and my mentee's relationship. Don't ask.

Another unsuspecting moment happened when I was sweeping the hall of the Rita Home during lunch when one of the girls from Rita, who had been observing for the past 10 minutes, came up to me and asked if I had eaten lunch.  I told her I would eat after I’m done but she was unconvinced.  Swiftly, she scooped up the heap I was sweeping and told me to go in to eat.  She’d take care of it, she said, and walked towards the trash can, without looking back.

Atikah! Thank you for your beautiful stories.

These stories may seem simple.  Maybe even a bit insignificant.  But I think I speak for the whole SEALNet team, working on a project that had its unique set of challenges, that these little moments in the day are what we live for and find pride in.

Our resilience as a team made the act of stubbornly putting the interest of the kids above our needs for sleep and frustration over mosquito bites easy.  There was a lot of heart given in striving to build their self-esteem, empathy towards others, and courage to ask for help when they needed it.

Our mentees bravely presenting their SEALNet Junior Club plan. So proud.

It also took a lot of patience in knowing that we cannot accomplish everything in two weeks but we can accomplish many little things as best we can. And perhaps, some faith in the power of little moments just like these that have the potential of becoming something bigger and surprising us in moments when we least expect it to.  Just have a little faith.

Pertika--what a beauty.

Human Stories

Learning and the process in which humans learn have been things that have always been the center of my fascinations throughout my life endeavours (I sound old).  It has taken me 20 years (yeap, pretty old) to realise this core appeal that has existed in many of my adventures--questions I posed to myself, wondering what was it that kept me coming back to things that most of the time, aroused much fear and uncertainty?  My first year at Hampshire might have helped me shed some light on what and where my passions lie.  

I am eager to dive back in this coming year and discover even more about myself, and in extension, the world--the people living in it and the stories they carry with them.

"Do not despise your inner world. That is the first and most general piece of advice I would offer… Our society is very outward-looking, very taken up with the latest new object, the latest piece of gossip, the latest opportunity for self-assertion and status. But we all begin our lives as helpless babies, dependent on others for comfort, food, and survival itself. And even though we develop a degree of mastery and independence, we always remain alarmingly weak and incomplete, dependent on others and on an uncertain world for whatever we are able to achieve. As we grow, we all develop a wide range of emotions responding to this predicament: fear that bad things will happen and that we will be powerless to ward them off; love for those who help and support us; grief when a loved one is lost; hope for good things in the future; anger when someone else damages something we care about. Our emotional life maps our incompleteness: A creature without any needs would never have reasons for fear, or grief, or hope, or anger. But for that very reason we are often ashamed of our emotions, and of the relations of need and dependency bound up with them. 
...
We are all going to encounter illness, loss, and aging, and we’re not well prepared for these inevitable events by a culture that directs us to think of externals only, and to measure ourselves in terms of our possessions of externals. 

What is the remedy of these ills? A kind of self-love that does not shrink from the needy and incomplete parts of the self, but accepts those with interest and curiosity, and tries to develop a language with which to talk about needs and feelings. Storytelling plays a big role in the process of development. As we tell stories about the lives of others, we learn how to imagine what another creature might feel in response to various events. At the same time, we identify with the other creature and learn something about ourselves. As we grow older, we encounter more and more complex stories — in literature, film, visual art, music — that give us a richer and more subtle grasp of human emotions and of our own inner world. So my second piece of advice, closely related to the first, is: Read a lot of stories, listen to a lot of music, and think about what the stories you encounter mean for your own life and lives of those you love. In that way, you will not be alone with an empty self; you will have a newly rich life with yourself, and enhanced possibilities of real communication with others."

- Martha Nussbaum

And that, freakishly sums up my next quest in college--and life, actually.  Simple, right (I'm still deciding if that is meant to be irony).

The Good Life

Thoughts of Martha Nussbaum, a philosopher I knew nothing about but whose words I read in passing and felt compelled enough to share. Because I saw a little of my thoughts in hers, as well.

"MOYERS: The common perception of a philosopher is of a thinker of abstract thoughts. But stories and myths seem to be important to you as a philosopher. 

NUSSBAUM: Very important, because I think that the language of philosophy has to come back from the abstract heights on which it so often lives to the richness of everyday discourse and humanity. It has to listen to the ways that people talk about themselves and what matters to them. One very good way to do this is to listen to stories. 

... 

To be a good human being is to have a kind of openness to the world, an ability to trust uncertain things beyond your own control, that can lead you to be shattered in very extreme circumstances for which you were not to blame. That says something very important about the human condition of the ethical life: that it is based on a trust in the uncertain and on a willingness to be exposed; it’s based on being more like a plant than like a jewel, something rather fragile, but whose very particular beauty is inseparable from its fragility.

... 

Being a human means accepting promises from other people and trusting that other people will be good to you. When that is too much to bear, it is always possible to retreat into the thought, “I’ll live for my own comfort, for my own revenge, for my own anger, and I just won’t be a member of society anymore.” That really means, “I won’t be a human being anymore.” 

You see people doing that today where they feel that society has let them down, and they can’t ask anything of it, and they can’t put their hopes on anything outside themselves. You see them actually retreating to a life in which they think only of their own satisfaction, and maybe the satisfaction of their revenge against society. But the life that no longer trusts another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer. 

... 

Tragedy happens only when you are trying to live well, because for a heedless person who doesn’t have deep commitments to others, [the conflict in making impossible choices between multiple things we hold dear] isn’t a tragedy… 

Now the lesson certainly is not to try to maximize conflict or to romanticize struggle and suffering, but it’s rather that you should care about things in a way that makes it a possibility that tragedy will happen to you. If you hold your commitments lightly, in such a way that you can always divest yourself from one or the other of them if they conflict, then it doesn’t hurt you when things go badly. But you want people to live their lives with a deep seriousness of commitment: not to adjust their desires to the way the world actually goes, but rather to try to wrest from the world the good life that they desire. And sometimes that does lead them into tragedy."

But that's okay.  (this mysterious guy, Jesus, told me this too) Because as humans, we do what we do best: have faith and carry on.

"Most of the time, the two 'enrich each other and make the life of each of them better.' But sometimes, practical circumstances pose such insurmountable challenges like an important meeting and your child’s school play happening at the same time — one of these two priorities inevitably suffers, not because you are a bad parent or a bad leader, but because life just happens that way. Therein lies the human predicament — the more we aspire to live well, according to our commitments and priorities, the more we welcome such tragic choices. 

And yet the solution isn’t not to aspire."