Society is about “being up to date” now in the 21st century where we’ve surpassed the Global Village theory of Marshall McLuhan. I think we as humans are now all in a Global Classroom. By classroom I do not literally mean a physical classroom that you find in an institution; by classroom I mean being in a space and time for people to come together with the will to learn and grow as human beings.

A classroom setting exists for learning. It consists of students and a designated conductor who generates contents to generate production in the classroom setting. Students see themselves as competition. It’s inevitable. If someone in my class impressed everyone in the room including me, I’m going to be influenced and so will the teacher. The “teacher” isn’t the leader — which is the most common misperception we have in the classroom. The “teacher” is also a student as well as the manager who provides direction — whether it be through a course syllabus or their own guidelines on stirring students’ potential.

We students (which also includes the “teacher”) learn from each other and sometimes unconsciously envy each other because we “think” that it’s about competition, just like nations think it’s about competition. We are all students; we are all teachers. We separate ourselves from one another, we create groups, we form bonds, we segregate others, and most times we really miss out on the very purpose of what a classroom is and what it can provide. The fact that we are in this classroom and we are amongst people with differences, people with different perspectives, people with creativity, opinion and voice, is what makes this generation significant and unique.

We think so much about ourselves and polish our ego or sulk in them. When all that really matters is acknowledging and accepting people for who they are and not for what they appear to be. A classroom is about disagreeing, it is about debate, it is about dialogue, it is about perspectives and what it’s not about is who is right. It is about leaving what actually happens in a classroom in a classroom, and taking the knowledge and experience away and applying it accordingly. That is the problem we have encountered in this Global Classroom of the world.

It is unfortunate to see nations invade other nations without having any right to do so. That is called lighting up the match of war for the purpose of gaining something for their own so called country (greed) without caring one bit about the people who live in that country who are the country (citizens). Let’s start learning in our classrooms and lets stop looking at our differences as reasons for separation. We love those adrenaline rushes and we love being angry, but we will go home eat dinner, go to bed and start a new day, without that anger having any affect on our behaviour. That is called practice. We need to practice.

I might be publishing this soon in an upcoming book David Barringer is currently compiling content for.

I decided to make this entry a combination of both the moral of my bicycle posts as well as my reflection on the internship experience thus far because they are very much intertwined.

I continue where I left off about the fear of riding the bicycle hands-free. With my bike here in Chicago, this task seemed impossible. The bike was sixty dollars, used and old, but repaired and admirably functionable. In my mind, when I let go of the handles, I felt insecure. I felt that this bicycle was not reliable enough for me to let go. I felt foolish for even trying because my thoughts told me that there is no way I would be able to free my hands and move from the forward lean position to vertical sitting position; it was impossible, the bicycle wasn’t meant for it.

Why did I keep trying to do it? Because of the challenge. I liked the idea of risk. I kept practicing over and over on the same trail I took every day. Finally about two weeks ago, I did it! I let go completely and I sat straight and I pedalled. It was so easy that once I did it, I couldn’t see how I couldn’t do it before. It wasn’t scary at all! The bike goes completely straight, the steering bar doesn’t move and I sit right up without any worry that I will fall… at all.

This past week I’ve been doing it a lot more — maybe a third of the trail even. I open my arms; I feel the wind; I pedal to the right of the trail; I pedal to the left of the trail. How could I not do this before? Why was it that it was so difficult the first couple of weeks? Why did I fear letting go?

As for being here at one of the most well established design firms in Chicago — if not America — amongst a spectacular staff, inspiring team with an abundance of creativity and multiplicity of skill-sets, I still found myself unhappy until just last week. Well it wasn’t that I didn’t value where I was or what I was doing; it was because I couldn’t face my ego. I had not come to an acceptance that the situation I was in was just that — the situation…and I had to deal with it. I did say to myself that I have to deal with it, but I didn’t really live it. I wasn’t it. I didn’t know who I was when I was thinking so much in anger and defending my own thoughts as reality. I was working in a team (of interns) that really wasn’t working as a team. In my mind it wasn’t working because I was so different and I am sincere but my sincerity is not being acknowledged and I’m on the back burner at all times.

What did I do? I turned it around and I made it work. I didn’t turn reality around. Reality is what it is, as in, we are who we are but our relationship with people and things are what we learn from and conduct our actions based on our knowledge through these relationships. You learn to work with what you have and accept it for what it is, not for what you think it should be. Why be angry and spend my bike rides in thoughts of anger…or fear in the case of my bike inspiration. Fear and anger go and in hand. If we can’t face our thoughts of fear and anger and really be them, then there is no way we can learn from them. Facing them means to accept them for what they are and allowing them to open your mind to reality…in all it’s potential.

Thanks SM. Beautiful time in my life.

Palms Light
SUNS
addresses HOME
420
LOVE
Kindliness and PEACE
sincerely,
Mike

…and the dialogue continued while we both waited under the roof of a bus station for the morning rain to stop pouring in downtown Elgin Illinois. The rain calmed, so I pressed play and continued through the day, on a wet and empty trail with rain making presence in my experience.

This podcast of Canada’s Governor General Adrienne Clarkson is one of the most amazing speeches I have ever heard from a politician. Please take time to listen to her and what she has to say about how we can come together as a people and live amongst our differences.

Listen here

This is from the CBC website

Canadians have come to believe that the diversity we enjoy in our country is familiar and reassuring. But, what about the future of a Canada which lives with difference but does not understand it? Is it necessary to prepare for a future in which contrasting values and expectations could clash? In the 2007 LaFontaine-Baldwin Symposium, The Right Honourable Adrienne Clarkson reflects on the challenges we must face individually and as part of the community we have created around us.

One day in the early months of last year, when I was in Toronto, I decided I wanted to buy a bicycle. Why? I still can’t remember exactly how I got into it, but after I built on the momentum, a serious cyclist friend helped me pick out my five hundred dollar Trek3900 bike — the cheapest bike in the shop. I bought it from Duke’s Cycle on Queen West. We hopped around a few places but they were all pretty much out of my range. We went back, I spent all my investments for a vehicle and rode my killer twenty four speed mountain bike from the shop to my (now former) house. My friend wished me a safe trip and I was on my way uphill along Bathurst street for a ten mile hike… for the first time. Honestly, it really wasn’t that bad. I think I was sore for the next couple days but I really loved it. I traveled from home to downtown roundtrip, I’d say ten to fifteen times that summer. I found a bike path too, so I wasn’t on the dirty Bathurst street any more. There aren’t enough bike lanes in Toronto, what’s up with that? I’m glad people inspected all the rouds and found paths for cyclists, otherwise you have to find your way beside cars and the angry drivers.

So, cycling became my new sport. It was since I had left Iran that I hadn’t been on a bicycle. In Iran — oh my goodness, I don’t want to get to my childhood memories because I’ll cry — it was heaven. I had a wonderful childhood amongst nature, fruits and vegetables, large swimming pool and large family gatherings that will only exist in all our memories and reveal their documented beauty through photographs. Back there, I biked a lot, that was the point I was trying to get at.

I went down to Sarasota Florida (as some of you may know or have noticed) for a mobility/exchange program through my school in Toronto Canada. I lived there for five months without knowing a living soul. I met my roommate through craigslist on the phone and it turned out to be one of the most amazing experiences in my life. Anyway, again, the point is, I bought a bicycle the second day from a non-profit bike shop called the Alliance for Responsible Transportation (A.R.T). It was forty five dollars. I went everywhere with it. Biked to Lido Beach the first week, biked all around Sarasota and biked til I dropped. Florida is just natureful. It’s absolutely gorgeous. I loved the bird sounds, the palm trees, the aloe veras, the customized colourful houses and their mailboxes, and I absolutely loved the weather.

Getting back on track, so, now I’m here in Chicago doing an internship at samatamason; if you read the last post, you’ll know the details about my daily roundabouts, and if you read even before that you’ll know where I got it from.

The difference between my bike now and my previous two bikes, is that it’s a road bike. It has thin tires and you lean forward — it works your triceps a lot. It was quite a drastic difference between my other bikes. It’s really easy to pedal hands free with my Trek bike because the steering head doesn’t move and you can feel that it’s stirdy and secure. With this bike I couldn’t do it. It was way too risky and every time I took one hand off and then tried the other, I’d immediately go off balance and grabbed on to the steel. Must be the bike, I thought. Well, I’m going to write about the moral of the story after this entry, just so I can get all my thoughts together.