True Love is Inexhaustible, the more you give, the more you are given...

I went to Africa with my University as a part of an "immersion" to learn about sustainable and innovative solutions to poverty. We traveled to Uganda and Rwanda and saw beauty and horror going hand in hand. I came home with no explicit expectations but now that the inherent expectations I had for the people I love have not been met, I realize that I anticipate too much from people. You see, I saw tombs, graves, memorials, skeletons, slums, AIDs, poverty, hunger, sadness and yet was overpowered with a sense of hope and joy and came home expecting people to understand.

NOTE: This is another post found in my drafts - I continue to have high expectations and am not sure if they have been met by those around me. I have begun to be a bit of a cynic but at the same time I recognize if I could experience the hope I did where and when I did on my 2009 journey to Africa, then I know we here, with our marginal problems, can find true, endless, burdenfree joy.

Quarter Life Crisis?

I'm sitting at a desk in a room where I'm fairly certain no one knows what I am doing. I greet people with a smile as they come in and most of the time they greet me. I can feel the judgement they pass on me. I am an outsider to their world with really very little desire of fitting in. It seems they can sense it on me. I feel as though I am masquerading as something I am not. I am constantly yearning for something different, something more me, it's just that I don't know what that might be.

I am happiest when I am in school. I excel there. I'm a good learner. I'm a good presenter and I enjoy academics. Having no true desire to teach I am worried that the lifestyle I have lived to this point of "perpetual student" will have to come to an end. So I wake up each day and convince myself I am excited to go out and do what I do. I convince myself that despite the apprehension I feel I am doing something great. It is a constant debate in my head. One to which I cannot assign a winner or a loser. So it remains a circular discussion that I am hoping for an end to.

NOTE:I foudn this blog in my drafts and chose to publish it as is. Some things have changed - I LOVE TEACHING. I am working on a phd and love my students and my school. I excel at school still and think it may be one of the many avenues I use to make change. I have a new found resolve in what I do.

Just sitting here

It's funny to be just sitting here, no one around, TV on, computer, phone, ipad, thoroughly connected and yet engaged with nothing. Confronting my health, listening to my body, being in tune with myself. It's just a bit funny.

I sit here with chills running up and down my body. My good ear (see my blog Living With Herbert for details on why I have a good ear and a bad ear now) throbbing strangely, inciting the fear that what remains of my normalcy may disappear. So I sit here and think, what is normal. Who gets to decide? I certainly don't, at least not for myself any more.

Then I realize how perfectly fitting my blog name is for me now. I am perfectly imperfect. There is not a thing about me that is not tragically flawed, and that is me and I am okay with me. I'm just sitting here, surrounded by stuff, surrounded by things that cannot fill the void in my heart. A brain tumor. I have a brain tumor. WTF. How did this happen? None of the stuff makes it better. It makes life seem that much more urgent. I think of my friends - do they know I love them? Should I cut those I don't? Worse yet, do I cut out the friends who I loved fully and never returned my joy, my love, my friendship? Will he commit to me? Will I end up alone? Will I have the strength to walk tall and alone? Will I even ever need to have that strength? Will I stand alongside those people who share my beliefs and stand up to those who don't? Will I stop being such a door mat? I'm not a door mat. I'm just me. I'm okay with me.

It's weird, to let the clutter fade and just sit here, alone, with thoughts that arguable don't make any sense. I am regularly contradicting myself. I consistently, even here, in this place and moment of expression, shield my thoughts in anticipation of judgement or backlash. I'm the doormat on the inside of your door, the one you walk on so your feet don't get cold when you take your shoes off on the cold tile. I suppose that is better than a regular doormat. Who knows. What the hell am I even talking about????

Peace - Samira

Working on good

I don't often post to this blog anymore. It seems as life has transitioned for me, so had my need to write and in which venue I choose to do so is an indication of where I am, in my mind and in my heart.

Recently I have been stricken by some health issues and my tolerance for so many things have diminished. I am less patient, less forgiving but also so much more loyal, quick to smile, and ready to laugh, joke and love. I have been relying heavily on the people around me, often not even realizing that is what I am doing. I have found some semblance of normal in the face of transition but I know that my focus has diminished, my work suffered and my heart often hurts.

It is in these moments that I remember a lesson I learned from one of the most amazing women I have ever known, Kimra. She once asked me how I was doing and I said fine. She looked at me and asked again how I was doing. With tears in my eyes I uttered that I was fine. She told me it was okay to be honest. That is was okay to want to be fine or good but not be there yet. It was okay to be working on good. That's what I am now, I am working on good. I am not there all the time but I am so close on so many days. Often times I am GREAT and those days push me through the less favorable ones.

We live in a society where appearances mean so much. Who we are is so tied to who we portray ourselves as. Our persona is almost as important as the true honest personality inside. In this society it is often hard to remember that we are infallible. That we are always learning. That we are pushing through to new levels of growth, love, respect and accountability. We are walking along side one another on a path to understanding. So it is okay not to understand it all right away.

In past posts I have talked about love, life and death and I have talked about my work that focuses on change and progress for women around the world, but I never was okay with having a down day. I was always so intent on the optimistic point of view that I rarely recognized the healing process. Here and now, I recognize that the journey is beautiful even when it is hard. As Kimra always says, joy for the journey. As I continue on my journey I am working on good but in every day, every minute and every second I am finding more joy than any one journey should allow. This is how we work on good. This is how we make it to tomorrow, by loving what we have in front of us today.

Back in Business?

I don't often write here and it is simply because I didn't feel for a while there that I had much of anything to say. I feel differently about that now. I've always had something to say, it seems now that I didn't know how to say it. As of late I've had a resurgence of confidence in my ability to tell people that they cannot misuse me as their friend, colleague or otherwise. I've reignited my passion for learning and abandoned those who seek to exploit a hardworker. It seems I am back in business....or am I? I've started my own business an L3C dedicated to helping the developing world and while I have done very little in the way of getting it off the ground I am making the steps I need to progress. I have begun a PhD program and simultaneously renewed my commitment to becoming a multimedia maven and bringing stories from the world to the world. Then why is it that I sit here, in my new home that I proudly own and wonder with all these frameworks I have with which to make a difference I feel that I missed my calling? I want to produce things and make things, I want to be on the ground, in the field and as I sit here and read what to me are arbitrary theoretical constructs while Hoda and Kathie Lee give makeovers on the Today show in the background, I wonder if I've made the right decisions in getting me to where I want to go and if not, how do I undo what I have done.

Maybe I should have just gone to film school...or Africa....or both...

On Family, In Sadness

I think I have been swallowing grief for a long time. In the past two years I have seen many people die in my family and the community I keep. I have walked tall despite the sadness death brings and told myself that because I've volunteered to help children manage grief at Camp Comfort I am somehow "ok" with death. I am not even sure what it would mean to be "ok" with something that is hard to grasp. Do I see it as inevitable? Yes, I know we will all die and I believe that there is some kind of reason or meaning for it, but I'm not sure what that is. Today as I walked through the hallway in my family's home, I noticed the pictures on the wall for the first time in a long time. They are faded by the sun and as I scanned the relatives I realized half of those people depicted are gone. They've died and I've lived in a world that doesn't let me feel the impact of their deaths for a long time. The majority of those lost live in Iran and since I don't see them everyday I simply put my head down and continued about my day to day ambitions, disallowing myself to think of them. In my mind and heart they were still a phone call away. I couldn't miss their presence because I didn't have it anyway. But as I looked through what has become a silent memorial to them in the hallway I realized that their homes must feel different, that their kids are now fatherless or motherless. I saw myself sitting in their homes, missing them, wishing for them. The next trip to Iran would feel sad without them, because they are the people I go there to see. I always try to rationalize death, to say that at least that person is not in pain any longer. Now, I selfishly am wondering how it will feel to miss them. My aunt is sick. She has cancer and it has spread rapidly through her body. I continue to say to everyone that she will be fine. She has a strong spirit and yet somewhere in the back of my mind I feel sorrow. I feel that maybe cancer is stronger than all of our spirits. I feel afraid and I wish that I could make her better. I saw her picture on the wall, intermingeled with those of family both alive and past and her face looked antiqued and far away. I suddenly felt 2 years of grief rush over me. I suddenly thought to myself, there is no framework to understand this and I am not "ok" with it. As I sit in my family's home, all alone, I begin to miss my loved ones and I quietly begin to cry. I think to myself that I spend so much time following my ambition and working I have missed so much of their lives. I text my boyfriend and tell him about my aunt, wanting any connection to someone I love in that moment. I reflect on all of our happiness and our joy, past and future, and I think to myself, I hope their memories are always alive. And, while I am crying, I see their bright beautiful faces and hope they can stay immortalized in my heart. I pray not to forget.

A kid who caught the travel bug? Or a young humanitarian injecting passion into life

If there is anything I have learned from my short stint so far in the "professional" world is that life is all about perspectives. Some see me as a young, hardworker trying hard to make a name for herself, others see me as an entitled member of a generation of freeloaders seeking recognition for a job not done. I see both as problematic, I see them as peices of a pie. A big, multi-flavored complicated pie. This idea of perspective, however, helps us understand why we struggle to be heard and understood in our world.

I love to travel. I love to learn. I love to travel and learn. Some think I am a young girl that simply caught the travel bug. I saw glimpses of the world through travel with my parents from a young age and it appears that I seek to see the world and be a tourist. It is, in reality much more than that. I am a student of the world. I see in our world the eixtence of extremes. Where there are the extremely rich, there are the extremely poor. Where there are the radical leftists there can be found the radical conservatives. In the West or "Global North" I see in these extremes the excesses of privileged lives. We often see our lives as mundane despite the existence of multiple outlets for creativity, resources for change and really just an abundant amount of "stuff" to do. We create boredom because there is nothing on tv, no good songs on the radio and no one is tweeting anything new. We forget the roots of who we are and struggle to fill our days with meaning. We forget that our geography or our skin tone have contributed and created our success.

So why do I seek to travel, to work with new cultures, to understand their lives, their stories, their pain, their humanity?
I see in them my family, my story, my hopes and my dreams. My parents were not given any gifts by their geography. They were born in Iran and created their destiny by changing their geographical location (at least that's my perception). What is it about where we are born or live that dictates our lives? Without rights, freedoms and resources there can be little hope to see entrepreneurial spirits grow so ambition is replaced with poverty and desire with violence. It is a choice to change this but a choice that is not available to most. For a world where most of the wealth is in the hands of the fewest we must look critically at ourselves and understand why we are the way we are. We must see our flaws, our vices, our racisms, our judgements and instead of denying them try to understand why they exist.

This is why I travel. I am not naive, I realize that I cannot save the whole of Africa or Latin America, nor do I wish to. What I want is to share the stories of those we do not understand and foster that understanding. Perhaps an example will better explain what I mean...

I miss Africa. I spent only 19 days in Uganda and Rwanda. I miss it everyday.
I miss the pulse of the streets and the red dirt. Some stories say that the red earth is a result of the blood spilled by the African people over lifetimes of conflict. Others maintain that the red earth is the blood of humanity, the clay that created human life. You can feel those stories in the ground and it beats through you and creates a oneness with the world. I miss the genuine nature of a people whose history is often denied. I miss the contradictions of religion and service found in the organizations that advocate change. I miss the stories of pain, triumph, heartache, loss, success, love, fear, retribution, endurance. I miss the stories of life. The stories we in the West have often become too jaded to share. I miss the stories of life that don't involve cell phones, hot fashions or celebrity gossip. I want to see real life the way it is lived throughout the world and I want to use that to make our life, in our home stronger, more understanding and richer in humanity.

I want to see all fo the world, the pretty, the ugly and the in between and learn from it. I want to see racism, I want it to knock me down and hit me in the face like a sharp and biting wind so that I can get up stronger and more prepared. I want to sit with those plagued by poverty and even if I cannot stand along side them and understand their lives I can help them see their value and they can help me see mine. I want to see loss and feel resilience and share loss and resilience in my own life. I want to share stories and bring them back with me and by giving a voice to things we don't understand, maybe we'll be more willing, as a society to learn.

I am overly idealistic and maybe it is that I am entitled. Maybe it is that I am a pretentious child of privilege enacting that status by acting as a "saviour" of sorts. Or, maybe thats your perception. Maybe it's bigger than that. Maybe I am afraid and in that fear I find life. In the discomfort that comes from being out of my comfort zone I feel alive. It is in those moments that I really feel and allow others to feel with me. It is in those moments my pain and my loss is one with that of my brothers and sisters of choice around the world. It is in those moments, stripped of convenience and judgement that I can learn, I can teach and I can create change alongside those who choose to be advocates of hope with me.

I don't travel to see, I travel to immerse. My parents taught me a long time ago that the world is bigger than me and my needs, my wants and my desires. They taught me to care about people. Little did they know I would consider all the world people worth caring for. It's more than the travel bug, it's a change we can believe in.