Life is full of choices. We choose to get up in the morning, to walk or to drive, to eat and when to sleep. Sometimes our choices may seem to involve just ourselves, but this is not always the case.
Modeling is one of the strongest forms of teaching. Children, peers, and family are always learning from “your” actions.
Please comment in this blog about how you transformed your matter into a positive energy. INjoy the experience and let your words and actions become what they were intended to be!
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During a school board meeting last night there was much anger and hostility from the community towards the board and an air of aloofness and negligence from the board towards the community. In a speech I made, and the speeches that I helped students form I tried to alleviate this tension and transform the two negatives in to a positive by using the anger of the community to show their vulnerabilities and to play in to the superiority complex of the board by offering them the chance to help out people who were suffering. This seemed to be working at first but the two sides were reluctant to give up their entrenched stances and after the speeches they regressed into their comfortable positions and the negativity of the two sides won out and the meeting could not continue. I came up with a good idea to lead the movement forward but I was not a good leader in successfully facilitating that movement.
It was very interesting to read this. You folks have such positive energy and such a deep insight. I am humbled and ask again:"Who is the teacher and who is the student"
About choices. Yes, When I was your age I was not aware of this at all but now am much more aware how my choices affect everything and especially my own well being. It really amounts to being honest with myself and my conscience. Every one has a conscience: That soft quite and yet very powerful voice from within that is really us and if we follow the advice, this will lead us to make the right choices and if not we will fall and eventually learn (but it may take many many many units of time years? lifetimes?)
With Love,
--Dani
Hello dear folks,
I have been missing you and thought to write a few words this morning.
For some time now (a few months) I feel just energetic and happy. I never felt like that since I was a child. I know that some of you feel like that all the time and other do not. It does not matter. Each one of us has that hidden treasure inside.
I also notice that when I am in group of negative people, if I am not careful I get infected and become negative. The key is not to take things personally and be aware but it does take practice and intention. Bailey gave us a good example in the last entry in the blog.
It reminds me that there are two new posts. "Transformation of matter" and "Dalai Lama" Look at http://whatismath.blogspot.com/ Maybe you will be inspired to write but most important of all just feel good inside.
Here are some Math thoughts:
Maybe we can start just by connecting Math with anything else... a little math worm up to start up with: You do not need to reply
1. Why isn't there a largest number?
2. Why between any two numbers there is always another number?
3. What is 3/8 in percent?
Let me end with a quote that I received today:
"Hypothetically, people worry about everyone being selfishly oriented. "If everyone did exactly what they want to do, what kind of world would this be?" And we say, a really, really good one. Because if everyone did what they wanted to do, everyone would feel free. And if you feel free, you feel empowered. And every negative emotion that exists—hear this—every negative emotion that exists is because there is some sense of loss of freedom somewhere in there."
--Dani
The other day when i was hiking down the river, the one down by the gorges I stumbled upon a bee that had fallen in the river. This bee had a very large stinger and looked very scary. At this moment it seemed very vulnerable trying to climb onto a leaf to escape the current. I decided that the bee was struggling to much and would be happier dead. As a went to pick up a rock to euthanize the bee, I thought to myself who am I to end this bees life. Instead I stuck my finger in the water and the bee climbed onto my finger and passed out on my sleeve. I decided not to disturbed the bee, and after it got its strength back it started crawling around my sweatshirt and eventually flew away. This goes to show, even on a small scale, the impact that we can have everyday. I had two choices and by choosing the positive choice, hopefully I had a positive impact on the environment around me. I feel this can also be applied to people as well. At any time you can be positive or negative and you can affect the environment around you.
To me, the choices that I make in life are extremely important. For years before I came to college I struggled with an anxiety disorder and depression. It had a severe impact on the way I lived my life, and how I was able to connect with people. I lived my life in fear of rejection and in fear that one of my choices would lead to me being harmed. I was always scared that everything would go wrong in my life, and while I thought this way things did go wrong, seemeingly proving myself right. I didn't have the self esteem to see myself as a person being worthy of love, and this also hurt my friends because they didn't know how to help me.It was almost painful for me to go to school because all I could see were people making judgements about me. When I came to Ithaca, I was forced to make many decisions that I didn't think I could make myself. But when I did, and I had some success it made me realize how wrong I was about everything, and that I had complete control of my life. I now make many choices that have led me to let go of my anxiety, and embrace myself. I choose to get up in the morning, look in the mirror, and say to myself "You are worth it!", I choose to not fear rejection, because I know I am worth being around and worth being loved. I choose to better myself through education because I know that I can do whatever I want, so long as I believe in myself. I'm still not perfect, but I think I can really see now how much my own choices affect my outlook on life and how I live it.
I'm only just beginning to learn about and understand the ramifications of the choices I make every single day. Most foten I examine where I am in my life and how I've arrive here in regards to the variety of choices I've made. But in actuality, there are a million other elements of this concept to examine particularly how I am have affected someone else life with a particular choice or decision. I'm concious these days to do whatever 'feels right'. Not necessarily good, but correct. I've faultered in this in the past and done instead merely what I wanted to do because I know somehow I might benefit even just temporarily. This is no longer the case. But I've only been able to reach the place I am now from living the experiences I've just recounted in my past. I've hurt people and this is something I'm not proud of but understand that the only way I can learn and grow from those experiences is to focus on doing the right things in the future rather than obsessing over wishes to change the past. Additionally, even if I'm had a negative effect on someone, they in turn have learned and grown and that can't be all bad. I too have been hurted and have learned from those experiences and perhaps my transgressor has as well. I never understand the power of a single moment of choice. Regardless of the decision made, so much learning is to be done.
The past couple days have been rough and one of my close friends has been struggling with her rough OT curriculum. SHe was always one to get straight A's and do well on tests, but it seems that lately she is becoming stressed in work around her. She had failed her last test and was taking he ranger out on a lot ofus. I thought of the situation mike portraye din class and tried to put a positive spin on all of this. I also remember the sotry Dani told us about why we need to realiz ehtat grades shouldn't lead to happiness or sadness, and to realize the meaning behind what you do and what you've learned. I told her this, and that I would be there if she needed to go to the library with somebeody and study. She is now a lot less stressed, and I hope to see if my positive energy has a positive effect on her midterms next week.
The past two weeks have been hard for me. There's been a lot of stress coming from midterms, sophomore acting review, the IC Players production of The Goat that I'm in, work, and filming for an ICTV show that I was cast in. On top of all these things I've had and in some cases still have on my plate, I'm in a long-distance relationship with my girlfriend of almost a year and a half.
You might not immediately see the relevance of the last bit, but I assure you that it factors heavily into the amount of stress I feel. I rely very heavily on her. She's always able to help me forget about whatever's going on and just be happy in the moment.
On Friday, Holli was having an extremely stressful day. When we started talking like we do every night, both of us were stressed. You might think that this would be a terrible combination. Two people who want to see each other and can't who have both had bad days and are talking to each other and sharing their stress.
But as it turns out, that wasn't what happened. In our case, as in math, a negative plus a negative equals a positive! By listening to how her day had gone and empathizing with her, I was able to forget about how insanely stressed out I was and focus on cheering her up. I told her jokes and took her mind off of all of the problems she was having.
Pretty soon, she was more jovial than I was. At that point, our roles reversed and she once again became my support and lifted my spirits. So as long as you're willing to leave your negative energy behind, even if only temporarily, it doesn't have to be contagious.
I try not to be consumed with the negativity of the world but of course that is easier said than done. Recently there has been a great strain or barrage of negativity in my life but instead of pushing it out I try to envelope it and understand. Negative experiences are part of life, and without them we would not be able to appreciate the good that happens. While for the most part I am not able to transform this negative energy into anything, I am able to learn from it. I can take great strides to rise above it, or to walk away although sometimes you must face things head on in order to overcome them. I am fully aware of how general this statement seems but it's the best I can put together without going into too much detail about what has happened.
I feel a bit down in class because I am not embracing the philisophical aspect of the class. I am being to objectionable and thinking too analytical instead of letting go and understanding the concepts. I feel like a lot of the material in class is over my head. Sometimes I think I would have rather chosen a different math class where the answers are stagnent and precise, but I know that I would not have learned as much from that because in this class I have to find my own way to the answers which all vary.
I was extremely stressed out about my Shakespeare paper due this past week. I have really been enjoying the class, doing well in it, and I really really love the teacher, so I felt that a lot was at stake; I really didn't want to let myself or my teacher down. I was concentrating on of the two plays that we were allowed to write the paper on, and went through a few theses, none of which I could really stick to. I tried to write a draft, but found that I had a difficult time with my topic. I wrote about 3 pages, and found my writing to just be satifactory.
On the day before the paper was due, I had a realization and found a new perspective on how to look at the OTHER play. With very little time, I explained the situation to my teacher about how I had written some of one paper but wanted to start another. She was EXTREMELY encouraging, and set up a time to meet me that day, even though it was so last minutes. She let me talk through my ideas, and thought that it was, indeed, better for me to write about something that interested me more. Instead of scolding me for, lets say, not starting my paper earlier, or telling me that she thought that it would be better to finish what I had started, she encouraged me in pursuing my own interest, and even took out the time, stayed late, in order to meet me.
Later that night, I met a few students in my class who were also in a panic because they didn't have much of their paper done. We spoke about our topics, bounced around ideas, and I found that I was able to elevate their moods because of my earlier encounter. We all stayed up together in the hallway of Park, wrote our papers, and kept eachother awake until 4 AM when all of us were done with our papers. I don't think I could've done this without earlier encouragement from my teacher, and i was glad I could help in the motivation of others.
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