I stopped at the Twisted Taco on Monday night for a few beers and trivia to celebrate Katie's 21st, and my car got busted into. The window was smashed in using a sock full of stones, evident from a few of which were left on the car seat, and my bag with my laptop, camera, gps, mp3 player, about 275 bucks in gift cards, and some clothing. Most of it insurance will cover, but I'm still out $184 for the window, $100 deductible for the property, and I doubt the gift cards will be covered.
The real damage is in a number of irreplaceables, particularly the information on the computer. Although I occasionally backup my laptop, I hadn't done so for about two weeks. Scores of hours of work is lost, scores of hours of thought and preparation, so some animal could get a few dollars for drugs.
Its vague to me the mentality requisite to looking through people's cars, picking one out to loot, willfully smashing the window in, and then casually walking away with someone else's property. Its beyond my understanding how someone can do that, much less so much worse as people will do, but I do understand that it happens.
Putting my loss to shame, Shanky just got walloped for whatever he had on him in Nairobi last week and has lost potentially irreplaceable function of his hearing and who knows what else. From here, all we can do is hope he's okay, and when he returns, give him every last bit of support we can muster. He may need some real help. I'll recover from my loss in a few weeks, but he could be in it for the long run.
I have some small understanding of what can motivate willful intent of personal violence, but what I have almost no understanding of is why law enforcement permits it. It is not difficult to pick and choose who on the streets are robbing and looting and attacking people. People do not stand aimlessly in parking lots at 2 am because thats where they like to hang out. Identify the people causing the problems, and get them the hell out of the area. In the United States and throughout the world, theres no reason this type of behavior can't be extinguished if it decided that it will no longer be tolerated. Push these people out to the fringes and then snuff them out. You should be home in time for dinner. ¶ 7:01 PM 1 Comments
I've traveled very little in my life, even in the sense that for several years I hardly left the house. I was more interested in saving my money than moving around to collect experiential capital. But now I find myself zooming around all day, constantly on the move among 4 campuses, or "campi" perhaps.
I work to survive in a laboratory pursuing curative therapy for diabetes and other diseases for which engrafted cells may promote reversal of the offending physiological malfeasance. From there I shuttle to Grady Hospital, a magnet for Atlanta's indigent, which neighbors Georgia State University where I attend classes. It’s difficult to consider myself part of the student body there. I've never assimilated in these past 3 semesters. I sometimes chat with people I recognize from class, but I don't have any real relationships. I feel an intellectual disconnect with most of them, and while there's no shortage of clever kids there, there is certainly no surplus. My only meaningful connections there might be some professors who I've managed to engage.
Throughout the week, I make stops at Georgia Tech, my brother's alma mater, where I have entrenched myself in AIESEC. This is a real whirlwind of a student organization and blows away any others that have come to my attention. It can be described as no less than a microcosm of real world politics, play, pride, and passion. The real value-centers of the organization are never spoken of because they would send you running for your suicide room of a comfort zone if anyone revealed them to you before it was too late to get out. Learning business and leadership skills are what attracted me most to AIESEC, but the opportunity to travel and learn about the world first hand was what sealed the deal. I want not only to learn from others throughout the world, but to teach them about my world as well. This, of course, is a growing mentality among the younger generation of Americans and throughout the world and a mechanism of what is now described as the flattening world.
AIESEC is a different organization to every member. Personally, I'm at odds on a lot of issues with other people within my LC. While "peace and the fulfillment of human potential" is a common vision, it’s become apparent to me that the pathway to and meaning of that vision itself is very different depending on the @er you ask. Therein lies one of the hidden gems of the AIESEC platform, i.e. one of the aforementioned value-centers: the opportunity to learn skills to persuade others to your point of view. In academia, your success tends not be measured by or resultant of your ability to persuade others to your point of view as much as by the addle-minded rigor of debate that often concludes with the serene consensus to agree to disagree. Congratulations on earning your degree, kids, you can now barely discern fact from fiction. Diplomacy and persuasion are some of the most valuable and least acknowledged skills in human endeavor. This is why Henry Kissinger, a maven of persuasion, does not have a bronze statue in a public square yet.
Campus 4 is the office complex adjacent to Perimeter Mall, where I am taking a Dale Carnegie course for the next 10 weeks (I have completed 2 of 12). I have read Dale Carnegies three major works** and many other books and audio programs from achievement icons like Steven Covey and Brian Tracy. (Why these kinds of books are not mandatory reading in public schools, I cannot understand. Schools should be more in the business of teaching kids how to learn rather than what to learn, and that is what much of the success literature genre does.) I am elated to be taking the course because, since I have read the course materials over the past few years, I finally get a chance to put them into practice in an environment designed to help me integrate them into my behavior. I also want to bring what I learn back to my LC. This involves none other than persuading people to take on new perspectives to change their own lives for the better. See? I was right. Ba, da - bah!
About a year ago, I thought to myself that I was in the most dynamic period of my life. Since then, that dynamicism has only escalated. While I am starting to materialize what I have in store for my life, I can only imagine what my life has in store for me. I spiral from campus to campus throughout the week, often frustrated and inspired and exhaustingly energized at the same time, and I usually have the sensation of movement, winding up to launch myself into a maelstrom of personal and extra-personal conquest and change. I'm descending on a flight into Chicago this very moment, looking out over the physical reorganization of land and materials designed to make the environment a better and more efficient place to live. In AIESEC, we move around and reorganize people for the same purpose.
**How to Win Friends and Influence People, How to Stop Worrying and Start Living, and The Quick and Easy Way to Effective Public Speaking
