I remember the first time I watched Kerri Strug’s one-leg vault, I felt sick to my stomach. The conversations around me were centered on how “brave” she had been. As a fellow teenager, I was terrified that she was encouraged to injure herself for the sake of Olympic gold. Why would her coach, who I… Read More What We Should Learn from Simone Biles: Redefining the “Gold Standard”
We made it! My husband, baby, and I have survived our little one’s first 24 months, “despite” being new parents! I say “survive” and “despite”, because according to most parents who gave us unsolicited advice when they found out we were pregnant, having a child marks the end of everything good in our lives. Seriously.… Read More Bringing New Parents Up Rather Than Bringing Them Down: Achieving the “Unachievable”
This week’s posts were written with the victims of school shootings in mind—from those who died to their families, including those who survived and will carry the trauma with them for a long time. I started off the week with a list of immediately actionable things that each one of us can do. I then… Read More It’s Not Just About School Shootings: The Broader Picture, and What We Can Do
There is a lot of blame going around nowadays. I’m not sure if this is something that has always been a part of our collective discourse—have humans always focused so much of their energy on finding someone to blame for anything they weren’t happy with? As someone who is very religious, I have found myself… Read More Don’t Blame Math; Blame the Mathematician
I have been thinking a lot about the design of a neighborhood and how it could be adapted to better serve both the material and spiritual needs of its inhabitants. Now don’t get me wrong, I have no background in urban planning, urban design, or anything remotely close to the necessary fields to actually create… Read More What Vanuatu Structure I Wish My Neighborhood Would Build
Trying to contribute to the betterment of the world starts with bettering ourselves, our families, and our communities. It’s empowering to work on oneself and to see the changes in one’s personality; I regularly hit up my old journals and am amazed by how ridiculous I sound to myself a mere year later! For those… Read More Epiphanies and Realisations: Most People Are Kind, and Most People Want to Change Things
One of the greatest obstacles to building a vibrant, healthy global community–i.e. a better world–is the apathy of so many of its members, a large proportion of which go about life within a limited bubble: they go to work, go home, do their shopping, go on vacation, and ignore the negative things happening in the… Read More The Limitations of Shocking People Out of Apathy In The Hopes Of Building A Better World
There is an exciting discourse gaining increasing momentum online: how to use what the world has to give us—food, clothes, stuff—to live a better life, rather than living life to collect increasing amounts of food, clothes, and stuff. There is the minimalist movement, the sharing economy, the buy local movement, and, of course, efforts to… Read More Fulfilling Our Individual Responsibility Towards Global Economic Life
As my Instagram feed can testify, I love me a good cup of coffee. I think that there is a great culture around coffee, such as the Swedish fika or the tendency for college students to get together in coffee shops. I have made friends with not just the staff at Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue’s TWIGS café, but… Read More Coffee: From Crutch to Companion
Just a couple of weeks ago, Bahá’í communities around the world elected their national administrative bodies in a unique electoral process. One of its aspects is, as I personally understand it, that each elector has to make the effort to get to know all the members of one’s community. I also understand that to build… Read More How to Make the Time to Nurture Deep Friendships while Having the Time to get to Know All Community Members: Some Thoughts