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Knowing one’s self, Knowing one’s vision

What I’ve been longing to do for some time now is to go out into nature where the only company present is the trees, the animals, the sky and my own self. Life has its way of moving so fast. A part of me feels that 2018 began not too long ago, yet here we are at the end of another year. Especially when I am in school I feel that the clock turns faster. And December always seems to go by in a blur as classes end and finals hit and Christmas arrives bringing a warm, joyful- and quite often hectic- atmosphere with our families and loved ones. So I had to get away. Without too much time to travel far, I found a perfect place to hike fairly close to my home. It’s called Elk Island National Park. It has been many, many years since I’ve been, and for sure I never came in the middle of winter! I arrived as early as I could and began my trek through the snow-covered forest. Almost right away I spotted a family of elk running in the distance. And not long after that I came across two small
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How do you create connection?

Loneliness and the feeling of being unwanted is the worst poverty that exists. -Mother Teresa Earlier this week I received an email from my faculty, that a young man in his first year of engineering had commited suicide. They also informed us that there was another student, also in engineering, who ended their life earlier in September. I did not know them but my condolences go out to their family and friends. There was of course no explanation given as to why they made this choice, but I wonder if loneliness played a role. Because I have to agree with Mother Teresa, the worst thing in life is feeling alone, unwanted, unloved. We can go through stress and all sorts of difficulty in life, but only for so long as we have someone to talk to and someone who cares and believes in us. A close friend of mine recently shared with me this Ted Talk titled “ The Simple Cure for Loneliness “. I really appreciated the message. And with the somber news at the U of A received this week, I

What fundraising taught me -Part 2

Don’t worry, the wait is over. Here is the continuation of the lessons I learned while fundraising: The daily practice is what counts Did you know approximately 183 million people play the lottery at least once a year in the United States? [OneLotto, 2016] That is over 50% of the population! And in the UK about 70% of adults buy the lottery on a regular basis. [Lottoland, 2018] Those are staggering numbers. The point I am trying to make with these statistics is that we pretty much all have the same tendency to wish for a miraculous event. We all, at some point in our life, have hoped for the big miracle to save us or the big change to occur to make us happy. It is, of course, important to dream big but what is equally important is to have the commitment towards making the effort on a daily basis to bring these dreams into reality. While fundraising it was often easy to dream of getting a big donation in order to reach your goal. That way you wouldn’t have to work as hard. Well no

What fundraising taught me

One of my classes this semester is all about preparing us to land our first engineering job. So naturally the first area we all needed to tackle was our resumes. Resume writing can be a really tricky thing, hey? As I prepared and updated my own, I again had to go through the process of trying to choose my most relevant experiences and to find the right adjectives to express them with and...you know how it is. In my resume, though, there is a very noticeable gap where for three years I had no work experience and no further schooling. But I definitely had experience. It was a nice opportunity I had to revisit that time and the lessons I learned while attending and volunteering with Generation Peace Academy (GPA). In comparison to this, my time working or in post-secondary school, although important, was far less impactful on my life. The truth is, what I experienced would mean very little if I didn’t seek to find its relevance in my everyday life. It’s really like any of our experience

Read a book, share a book

I originally had a much longer introduction but I decided to shorten it after completing the list. Here’s the simple point I want to make: None of has it all together by ourselves. Our world has been built on the shared knowledge and experiences of past generations. Our world will continue to grow and develop with the new knowledge and insights being discovered and learned today. But many of us stop learning. Whether it be learning from our own experiences or learning from others. I get frustrated when I think about that because the old lesson is so true, “ Those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.” And we are repeating history alright. Making the same mistakes or, some would even say, worse mistakes. I get frustrated but then again I know I often have the same stubbornness and arrogance that most of us human beings have. So for me, I always try to read. It helps me to stay humble. It helps me to think of things I couldn’t think of on my own, and as a result I start to s

There is a truth and it’s on our side. Dawn is coming, open your eyes.

So are we just going in circles or are we moving in some direction? An interesting topic I came across recently was the different viewpoints of history. From this book I read, they were expressing how there are many ways people have sought to explain history, but that it can basically be narrowed down to two main thoughts. One being that history is linear. There is a goal and direction to history. The other being that history is circular. There will forever be a cycle of war and peace. This is quite a simplification and I’ll try to explain more as we go along and hopefully be able to introduce a third view of history. If you aren’t a huge fan of history, I get you, trust me. However, this topic is very interesting because our viewpoint of history will shape the way we see our own lives and the future. Let me explain. “If history is grasped as a linear movement, we can have hope in the development of history, but we are left without a good understanding of the breakdowns and revivals