Wednesday, March 26, 2014

A Tiny Bit of Change that Counts


I tend to procrastinate more often than I like. The longer I procrastinate, the bigger the task becomes, and the more I get afraid to start doing anything about it. Many of those little things get accumulated. I get overwhelmed and stressed, and eventually, I get depressed for not being able to do anything.

I also easily get upset about things that are completely out of my control. That makes me lose sight of things that I can actually do - small things like getting up 5 minutes earlier or 5 minute exercise.

I have been "thinking'' about meditating for a couple of weeks but it's not been happening. I know it's good especially when I get easily overwhelmed. Whenever I think about meditating, I get distracted about one thing or the other. I want to read one more article, check something on internet or facebook or emails.

Eventually today, I decided to just drag myself to meditate.

But, ONE thing I did it differently this time is that I told myself, "I will do it as long as I can, even if it is 5 minutes." The reason I've been avoiding to meditate is that I wanted to do it at least 40 minutes. So it never happened.

I still set up the alarm for one hour but I thought I would stop any time before the alarm.

In the beginning of the sitting, I definitely had a lot going on in my head. So many thoughts come and go. But later, I found myself becoming calm and the thoughts started fading. Slowly, I was more centered.

Then, what made me surprised was that the alarm rang! So it was a FULL HOUR! I felt really really great that I did a whole full hour of meditation while I only expected to do 5 minutes to 20 minutes.

After that, I finished a project within 2 hours, which I've been procrastinating to do it since five days ago.

So as the saying goes, a thousand mile journey does start with one tiny step.

Monday, March 24, 2014

Challenge of Understanding the Other Side

This weekend, I watched a movie, "300: Rise of an Empire" at the theater. We left in the middle of the movie. It was cliche, the usual war between good and evil. And predictably, the Persians were portrayed as devils using black magic to cheat the war against the alliance of Greek city-states.

I learned that there is a recent controversy in Iran about how Hollywood portrays Persians in the movies. It makes me question about a lot of things, both current and past, we know in this popular culture and how much of our knowledge and understanding is close to the truth.

When I thought about Myanmar history, it's all about history of kings, and rise and fall of kingdoms and empires. I never came across the accounts of common people in those times, and what they truly thought of the king and the events of those times. And the historian who wrote and recorded the account of the king's era was likely to be under the service of that king. So definitely, he wouldn't dare to say anything bad about that despot and his actions.

I went to a liberal arts college in the U.S. where we learned different range of disciplines covering science, social science and humanities. I really enjoyed it because classes were mostly about exploring, analyzing, discussing and debating issues rather than trying to come to absolute right or wrong answers. But still, all of my five political science classes, we dismissed communism easily. We didn't discuss much about it. We didn't try to understand the arguments communism makes even though it was the ideology that challenged the world once.

When I first read the article on xojane about the Duke porn star, like many others', my reaction was pretty strong and very judgmental of her. I refused to really understand what she was talking about because I had prejudice against sex on the camera. I couldn't try to understand the argument because of the stigma we often associate with sex. But, I obsessively followed so many articles about her - both arguments on pros and cons. I struggled for a long time, asked myself so many questions and made various arguments about feminism vs female sexuality, issues about sex workers and morality. What she did good was opening up the dialogue about our views on sex workers and speaking up for those sex workers who have been long silenced due to the social stigma.

It is much easier to portray history, ideologies and people in black and white, or good and evil. Many of us are guilty of falling into stereotype/generalization traps. But in reality, people are very complex, and historical events and ideologies that result from actions and understandings of these people are likely to be quite paradoxical as well.

That's why a wise friend once said that, "there are three sides of the story - my side, your side and the truth."

In the attempt to show various sides of the story, "Game of Thrones", both book and TV series, is pretty good. I get to see the events from perspectives of different people - nuances of each person's actions and their struggle to be wise and honorable in various occasions. Some characters who you consider just and honorable could also do something unwise. Some dishonorable person is also capable of doing something really noble and wise.

Sometimes, I get really frustrated wondering, "Am I ever gonna "fully" understand something or someone, even myself in this lifetime? Or Should I just give up trying to understand at all?" I guess what matters is openness - openness to listen to other opinions that are opposed to mine and to engage in dialogues, even if it's sometimes difficult and uncomfortable. I'm not going to be fully successful in it. But, I think it's good knowing that I tried and made some progress.

Photo Credit: actstraining

Sunday, March 23, 2014

How Inequality Affects All of Us

When I lived in New York, it was so hard to choose. Out of the countless different things the city offered, I could never decide where to eat, what to do, who to see.

Since moving back to my home country — Myanmar — I have seen how the majority of people here have very little choice at all. They’re simply struggling to get their daily meals. It’s one thing to read about poverty and hunger, but it’s another to see the faces of hunger-pained people right in front of me.

I could have easily been another poor kid on the streets, but I happened to be born into a family who could afford to send me to good schools and provide me with a comfortable life. I was born into a situation which allowed me to grab opportunities, pursue life goals, and chase my dreams.

I’m haunted by this.

A few weeks ago, inequality and injustice took on solid numbers that have gone viral, shocking everyone. According to the 2014 Oxfam Report, the top 85 richest people in the world have more wealth than the poorest half of the global population. 

(Take the entire population of Canada and multiply it by roughly 20 and a half. Those 700 million people would have less money than a random group of 17 individuals. That’s the kind of gargantuan inequality we’re talking about here.)

Oxfam also points out that this inequality is growing due to “power grabs’’ by wealthy elites who buy out political systems...Continue Reading on Converge Magazine