Hello everyone,
The last few days have been quite meaningful. I am proud to say that I have travelled halfway around the world by myself. It was a valuable experience, and I connected with myself on a whole new level when I did it. When you're with other people, you usually talk to them, so it logically follows that when you're by yourself, you talk to yourself, aloud. I never understood why people think talking to yourself is crazy: you're with yourself 24/7, so you might as well talk to yourself. I do it all the time. I usually enact a conversation in two people: one who asks, "ok, we need to go to gate C4. Do you have your boarding pass?" and the other who makes cool observations and says creative things. It is akin to the left brain and the right brain. Personally, I enjoy the second person more: he is a lot more interesting and fun. It is funny when the first person tells him to be quiet and focus, and he laughs like a maniac.
The reason I am telling you all of this is to show you a way to cope with responsibility and loneliness. This doesn't just have to be Me, Myself, and I. Nothing does. You can still make connections with the world, and understand how it all works. The talking to myself really helped me do this. Even though I was physically alone, I knew that spiritually, everyone I know was with me. For instance, I really appreciate the lengths that my family went to coordinate everything, and I couldn't have done any of this without them. At the same time, talking to yourself violates social norms, which I really enjoy doing. It's good to be crazy, because being normal is boring. I think many people act differently when they are by themselves. They often put on a mask for the rest of the world, and from that, we have a falsely constructed notion of sanity versus insanity. I believe that deep down, everyone is 'insane'. Some people would beg to differ, and that's fine, too. But there are many more who would completely agree. It is like what the author Neil Gaiman said in his graphic novel The Sandman, Volume 5: A Game Of You: “Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.” Talking to yourself is basically a way to bring out these worlds inside of you. It is a way to be your own person, yet one with the world.
The best part of the journey was the ending, when I jumped for joy at the baggage claim in the Dayton airport. There was 80's music playing in the background, and it seemed to hit perfectly with the moment. Music has a way of doing that. Every sound just seems to fall into the right place.
My father picked me up and we talked about the time he travelled to Saudi Arabia by himself and how it compared with what I just did. I was very happy to see everyone and everything, including my house. Even though my house is not the most practically desirable in terms of location, I feel like it is a home. I get that rushing feeling of relief when I go there every day.
So now that we have talked about me, let's talk about you. There is an interesting week ahead in terms of projects and presentations for the school. I am planning to make a film of five to six minutes in which I depict the schools I visited and show some interviews I had with the teachers and students. I regret not getting more footage, but I will have to work with what I got. I am not the biggest picture or video taker, because those thoughts do not really occur to me when I am doing something truly worthwhile. Pictures and videos never really seem to do the moment justice. Many of the most important moments of our life happen spontaneously, and somehow, when you record something, it becomes less spontaneous. For example, after I was done having that discussion with my brother on the plane from Cambodia, I regretted not having recorded it, but I knew that if I did, we wouldn't have put our hearts into it as much. It would have been more orchestrated.
I am not exactly sure how the week ahead is scheduled. On the itinerary I constructed this past November it vaguely says 'Presentation' for every day of that week. Last year, when I went to Ghana, the Immersion group I was in basically had a summing up of experiences and ideas on how to expand Project Okurase. That will be probably be similar to what I will do, however I am still not sure when the school will be doing what. I do know that today, there is a lot of work to do, so I'd better get started.
Best regards,
Ahsem Kabir
The last few days have been quite meaningful. I am proud to say that I have travelled halfway around the world by myself. It was a valuable experience, and I connected with myself on a whole new level when I did it. When you're with other people, you usually talk to them, so it logically follows that when you're by yourself, you talk to yourself, aloud. I never understood why people think talking to yourself is crazy: you're with yourself 24/7, so you might as well talk to yourself. I do it all the time. I usually enact a conversation in two people: one who asks, "ok, we need to go to gate C4. Do you have your boarding pass?" and the other who makes cool observations and says creative things. It is akin to the left brain and the right brain. Personally, I enjoy the second person more: he is a lot more interesting and fun. It is funny when the first person tells him to be quiet and focus, and he laughs like a maniac.
The reason I am telling you all of this is to show you a way to cope with responsibility and loneliness. This doesn't just have to be Me, Myself, and I. Nothing does. You can still make connections with the world, and understand how it all works. The talking to myself really helped me do this. Even though I was physically alone, I knew that spiritually, everyone I know was with me. For instance, I really appreciate the lengths that my family went to coordinate everything, and I couldn't have done any of this without them. At the same time, talking to yourself violates social norms, which I really enjoy doing. It's good to be crazy, because being normal is boring. I think many people act differently when they are by themselves. They often put on a mask for the rest of the world, and from that, we have a falsely constructed notion of sanity versus insanity. I believe that deep down, everyone is 'insane'. Some people would beg to differ, and that's fine, too. But there are many more who would completely agree. It is like what the author Neil Gaiman said in his graphic novel The Sandman, Volume 5: A Game Of You: “Everybody has a secret world inside of them. I mean everybody. All of the people in the whole world, I mean everybody — no matter how dull and boring they are on the outside. Inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds... Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands, maybe.” Talking to yourself is basically a way to bring out these worlds inside of you. It is a way to be your own person, yet one with the world.
The best part of the journey was the ending, when I jumped for joy at the baggage claim in the Dayton airport. There was 80's music playing in the background, and it seemed to hit perfectly with the moment. Music has a way of doing that. Every sound just seems to fall into the right place.
My father picked me up and we talked about the time he travelled to Saudi Arabia by himself and how it compared with what I just did. I was very happy to see everyone and everything, including my house. Even though my house is not the most practically desirable in terms of location, I feel like it is a home. I get that rushing feeling of relief when I go there every day.
So now that we have talked about me, let's talk about you. There is an interesting week ahead in terms of projects and presentations for the school. I am planning to make a film of five to six minutes in which I depict the schools I visited and show some interviews I had with the teachers and students. I regret not getting more footage, but I will have to work with what I got. I am not the biggest picture or video taker, because those thoughts do not really occur to me when I am doing something truly worthwhile. Pictures and videos never really seem to do the moment justice. Many of the most important moments of our life happen spontaneously, and somehow, when you record something, it becomes less spontaneous. For example, after I was done having that discussion with my brother on the plane from Cambodia, I regretted not having recorded it, but I knew that if I did, we wouldn't have put our hearts into it as much. It would have been more orchestrated.
I am not exactly sure how the week ahead is scheduled. On the itinerary I constructed this past November it vaguely says 'Presentation' for every day of that week. Last year, when I went to Ghana, the Immersion group I was in basically had a summing up of experiences and ideas on how to expand Project Okurase. That will be probably be similar to what I will do, however I am still not sure when the school will be doing what. I do know that today, there is a lot of work to do, so I'd better get started.
Best regards,
Ahsem Kabir
As of now, this blog is exactly 10000 words!
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