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My Words for National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women

Hello and thank you for joining us in remembering fourteen women who were brutally killed and many other lives impacted by an act of hatred.

We think of schools as safe places where we learn, grow, realize our potential, and take steps towards progress as humanity, towards a brighter future. School was made unsafe for these women by an act of hatred. Someone hating their gender, hating their progress in a male-dominated field, hating feminism.

Thanks for being here. For staying safe and for making our community and school safe. A place we love and hatred has no place. A community safe for Indigenous peoples, a community safe for people of color, safe for gay, lesbian, transgender, and LGBTQIA members of our community, safe for those believing in different religions, safe for progress, safe for women, safe for feminists.

We do not have to look the same way, express ourselves the same way, fall in love the same way, or live our lives the same way to be able to understand, respect, and support each other.

Diversity is our strength. Let the memory of these women help us embrace our strength and take stronger steps towards a safer, more inclusive, more equitable, and more just future.

Representing Academic Women at SVSPO Event on Dec 6, 2021

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Perfection

I was reading “Brave New World” [1] from Aldous Huxley [2] a few days back. In the foreword, Huxley talks about the mistakes he has made in the design of the story and how he would avoid them if he would do it once again. In the fight with his conscience about these mistakes, he starts the foreword with “Chronic remorse, as all the moralists are agreed, is a most undesirable sentiment… On no account brood over your wrongdoing. Rolling in the muck is not the best way of getting clean” [1]. Then, he somehow loses to the temptation, and suggests the changes he would make to enhance the story.

Reading this, I remembered an interview Debbie Millman [3] did with Alain De Botton [4] for Design Matters [5], where he talks about his previous statement “we fall in love because we long to escape from ourselves with someone as ideal as we are corrupt”. He talks about “the awful lot of self-deception in the process of love”, “how people are more susceptible to love those who they know nothing about”[6]  (as that is when they could be imagined as perfect), and how this relates to human beings’ desire for perfection and “projecting that missing perfection in the subject of love” rather than something really lovable in the person they love.

Feelings of longing and missing a person, a place, an action, or a history, are signs of desire for someone’s  own perfection and reflecting on occasions it is missed. For some it could tie to a person or a place, and for some it could be as perfectionist as remorse over missing the perfect design of a story. As attractive as the word “perfectionist”, it is the same main impediment to what it aims for.

From my old blog (Breathing Fine), November 12, 2017

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brave_New_World
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aldous_Huxley
[3]http://www.debbiemillman.com/
[4]https://www.designmattersmedia.com/designmatters
[5]http://alaindebotton.com/
[6]https://www.designmattersmedia.com/podcasts/Alain-de-Botton

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Camus Qoute

“I draw from the absurd three consequences, which are my revolt, my freedom, and my passion.”

From my old blog (Breathing Fine), June 27, 2016

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Boxes

Never bend to fit in a box, as then boxes come one after the other, and they only get smaller and smaller.

From my old blog (Breathing Fine), June 24, 2016

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Time-Stricken Conversation

He: Always aim high so it’s ok to fail.
I: You are inspiring!
A few years later…
He: Expect nothing so you can be happy!
I: What life has done to you…

From my old blog (Breathing Fine), June 22, 2016