The Beauty of Life

Today we have an excellent guest post from a friend mine, Tyler. We both just finished the International Project Management Program and while I have yet to go anywhere, his path has taken him to Uganda. He has recently started blogging of his new adventures while working in Uganda and he and I both thought his latest post would be a fitting addition to this blog. I encourage you to check out his blog if you are interested in working abroad and want to know the inner thoughts and emotions of someone who is already there. Tyler is an excellent writer and puts my writing to shame in comparison. If you want to check out his blog it is here at Seeds of Hope Uganda.

The Beauty of Life

My heart feels like an open canvas, letting the random strokes and colours of life paint the canvas as it progresses, each day revealing a little bit more vibrancy and detail to the larger picture of life. Each stroke coming with a different purpose, some much deeper and darker, representing the subtle hardships that we go through on a day to day basis, and other lighter strokes, rich in wholesome colour signifying the onset of a lesson learned or a passionate truth discovered, or the depth of having an engaging, somewhat enlightening conversation with a fellow human being. This canvas is endless, continuously evolving, and forever becoming more and more beautiful as we sail ourselves down the river of life.

A river greatly represents oneself, and ones path here on Earth. A river is formless, moving in one general direction, but able to branch off into streams and tributaries, each lending itself to new directions, new possibilities, unbounded and undiscovered territory where ANYTHING is possible. This shapeless, formless, open-directional reality is what makes living so amazing. It's what makes this very moment in time so special. I am now discovering that when we place a dam on our life, a point in the river where we harbour future directions from freely developing, we find ourselves in a state of stillness, of motionless life, where the amazement of the world becomes ordinary, where excitement turns to drab, where ones ability to look outside oneself becomes crippled. I am excited to break free of my subconscious dams that have kept me in a state of clingy comfort, and to go boundless into the open, hoping that my river leads me to the vast depths of the limitless ocean of life and the universe beyond.

As I sit here, sniffling away my flu, chugging back copious amounts of cough syrup, bails of Kleenex stretching the landscape of my room, I pause in great thanks for the world around us. The intricacy of life is mind boggling. Take a moment to look inside yourself, look around the room where you currently are, peer outside a window, take a long heartfelt gander at the world in your presence. Think just how intricate, detailed and in clockwork everything is. It is a constant wonder how any of this is possible. How humanity has come so far in innovation that I can sit here in Africa with my thoughts, and relate them to the rest of the world with a click of a button. It is an ever fascinating time to be alive and an extremely significant time to take what we have been given and truly shape ourselves and the world around us into the most caring, collaborative, humble place we can create.

Random Thought!!!!
I was thinking that what we truly believe is the world that is shaped in reality. It has been said by Darwin that the survival of the fittest is the reality of nature and is inherent in all aspects of life. This universally shared notion of reality maintains us being pegged against one another, lacking a sense of cooperative sharing on a universal scale. Humanity is constantly plagued by unending self interest, by a burning desire to benefit oneself over the needs of all those around us. Is this inherent, or has this become reality because of a universally share notion that we have all come to accept? What would the world be like if we all stepped back and gave collaboration, cooperation and sharing a chance. A place where we consistently step outside ourselves and into the lives and needs of others. People may say, "then my own needs wont be met". But if we were all reaching out to one another, other peoples kind efforts would be meeting our relative needs. It is also important for us to define need in this case. Do we really need all the false illusions that championed marketing campaigns tell us we need to live life? How often do you see people slaving away to make a top notch income, so that they can go buy things that they don't need in the first place. Does it bring happiness, fulfilment, a greater sense of meaning? We are all part of this vicious cycle, and it is deeply engrained in our minds. No doubt the world would become a brighter place if we rebuilt communities in our midst, placed focus on sharing with one another rather then the fear that has been fabricated to separate us apart. People may say this is extreme idealism, but what is a future without having a positive vision of what we want to become as citizens of this Earth.

May we all begin to wake up,
May we all begin to cooperate,
May we all see the shared benefit of one another,
May we all see that this planet is for ALL, not a select few,
May we all just be…

Tyler

Dreambank

One of the readers of this blog passed along this great website and I thought I would share it. It is called Dreambank and it is exactly what it sounds like. Dreamers post their dreams and Supporters help them realize these dreams. It has a bunch of other interesting tid bits and this is the run down according to the website.

What We Do
Dreams are inspiring! Just imagine how much happier the world would be if more of our dreams could come true. That’s why we created DreamBank. We want to help you fulfil dreams in a way that also cares for the planet and contributes to important social causes.

Here’s How We Do It.
First, we provide a fun, easy way for you to fund your dreams. By posting a dream on www.dreambank.org, friends, family and fans can contribute to your dream fund. Each contribution brings your dream closer to reality. Funding dreams is important, but so is support. DreamBank is also built as a community so you can connect and communicate with fellow Dreamers to: follow their progress, share ideas and resources, or just cheer them on.

Second, DreamBank is about helping the planet. By contributing to a dream, you spare the planet some of the nasty side effects of manufacturing, packaging and shipping gifts that, although we appreciate, we often don’t really need or want. Did you know that 83% of Americans[1] received unwanted gifts during the 2006 holiday season? All that ‘stuff’ puts a strain on the environment.

Last but not least, every time a contributor supports a dream, life gets a little better for someone else on the planet. That’s because DreamBank contributions are pooled into one big fund and the interest it generates is distributed to international charities and non profit organizations. Dreamers are given a choice of organizations to associate with their dream. This acts as a vote and tells us how to divvy up the charity pot according to our Dreamers' wishes.

At DreamBank everyone wins. Dreamers get a chance to fulfil their dreams; friends and family get to play a role in making dreams come true for the people they care about; the planet is spared needless environmental damage; and people in need get more help.

Give Dreams. Not Stuff.

A great idea that might be handy come holidays or birthdays instead of receiving gifts from a bevy of people you could post your dream (in some cases a gift you could never afford) and your friends and family can put a little towards the dream to help you realize it. Not only that but a not-for-profit will see something from it as well!

Paycheck or Service?

An article in the New York Times on June 23 entitled "Big Paycheck or Service? Students Are Put To Test" delves into the the world of top colleges and the consulting and financial jobs that follow and asks students to question where it is they want to go in life. A professor at Harvard has started leading reflection sessions to get undergraduates to think more about public service. There would appear a trend at Ivey league schools for students to head to wall street after graduation, which would seem peculiar since so many students go to school with the intentions of changing the world.

Is the lure of a large paycheck enough to stop people from pursuing their dreams and aspirations? The security? The fear of the unknown? What happens to the sense of adventure that so many young people possess? I watched the movie Accepted the other day and at the end of the movie one scene really strikes a chord with me. The only real professor at the school is leading a session where he says, "This is not your orientation; you have been oriented your entire life. This is your disorientation." Is that what school is? In my estimation I would say YES. It is a paradigm we exist in. The paradigm I have consistently said needs to be changed. The very method of thought orients everyone coming up through the school system to be brainwashed into thinking that a paycheck is the answer. Somehow we learn to believe that we can purchase our dreams and aspirations later if we abandon them now.

I am in this peculiar position right now where I have just finished school and am left to think about what is next. Do I go for the security of a job that I can certainly do but would rather not, or do I pursue what I have passion for, what I love? It isn't an easy question. Many of my friends now have jobs, are getting married, may soon start families, and here I am without even a job. It is too easy to follow the money, but there is this little voice inside my head and my heart telling me there is more awaiting me. What if my dreams and aspirations are within my power? What if I can change the world? I can't take the easy path until I know for sure. I have found myself disoriented from my disorientation but I trust I will eventually find my path. What about you, do you trust yourself enough to find yours?

New Years Resolutions

This will quite likely be my last post of the year. I would like to thank all of you who read this blog and provide your feedback - while I try to inspire people it is you who inspire me. It has been a busy few weeks in my life, even though I am on holidays. I will have a few things to announce in the new year which I am rather excited about, and I will try to post my Davos video before too long. I just have to figure out how to put it on video and post it to here and to Youtube.

This year brought many exciting changes in my life, and just a few things I wish I could have done differently. I think that is the case for most everyone, and the few who wouldn't change a thing can count themselves extremely lucky. Life has many ups a downs but I try to remember that with out the downs the ups just wouldn't exist. As we approach the new year I think everyone should think about a resolution. It is a goal for the next year of your life and the carrot at the end of the stick.

This year think about telling people your resolution. Write it down and put it on your bathroom mirror. Make it a solid goal - not just something you are thinking about and can easily forget about or let go - force yourself to make it real. Put yourself in a position to succeed and don't just create a resolution for the sake of having one.

We all have dreams, some of us over the years have been let down when we don't achieve our dreams, or feel scared to attempt accomplishing our dreams, and we are all conditioned to believe that dreams can never be reality. It is just not true - none of it. As the old saying goes, "If you believe then you will succeed" (or something like that). Dreams are not made to be broken, they are made to be accomplished. Failure to attempt is where real failure happens. If you try and it doesn't work then that is just a lesson on how you should try again next. Check out this video and get a taste of just what can happen when you dream.


My new years resolution is simple. Change the world little by little. I want to get my Ideal World book project up and running (which I will talk about in the new year), I want to graduate from International Project Management and get out into the field, I want to climb Mt. Kilimanjaro, I want to lose some weight (preferably a lot of weight haha) and I want to write blog posts more frequently. Scratch that - I will accomplish all these things. I dream big and I won't settle for anything less than my dreams. Anything in life is possible, we just need to dream it first and then go out and do it. As Nelson Mandela said, "It always seems impossible until it is done."