Quote of the week

The ache for home lives in all of us. The safe place where we can go as we are and not questioned.
― Maya Angelou, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes

Now that you’ve started getting comfortable it might be a great opportunity to take a quick look back and at where you started and talk about where you might go. This week in the All Student IFG we took the opportunity to do just that. We talked about goals and the relationship between them and growth. We started journaling not only as a way to track growth but as a means of creating our story and we discussed how those stories give substance and meaning to our lives. And while the dust has settled for the time being, some of you may be starting to feel that ache of home, especially in light of last week´s tragic shooting. In the SOC IFG we talked what it means to find a home away from home. We also talked about mindfulness practices as being rooted in the customs brought over to the US by various Asian communities, a practice they used to deal with the racism and xenophobia they faced. You can learn more about that here.

Creating Story
Meanwhile escalating tensions between Catalonia and Madrid have seen an ever growing divide that moves us closer towards the possibility of civil war. This is an incredible moment, built on inflaming people´s passions. It is an invitation to take a closer look at the conflict, to get curious about what´s beneath the rhetoric, what´s the feeling that animates this divide. This situation is an important reminder of how living within our default setting leaves us vulnerable to the whims of politicians, eager to distract us from the pressing issues at hand. As David Foster Wallace so poignantly wrote in his convocation address, “This is Water”, “the world will not discourage you from operating on your default-settings, because the world of men and money and power hums along quite nicely on the fuel of fear and contempt and frustration and craving and the worship of self.” For more on this check out this New York Times Op-Ed,

Stay tuned, stay interested, stay awake.