Savvy Women

This week I used the link I included in my last blog to locate another Tara Stiles video that I felt deserved a bit of commentary. This one is Stiles giving a mini-lesson on meditation, a subject, like yoga, I’m deeply interested in.

Stiles introduces meditation as a method of simultaneously gaining deeper awareness (of the self and things going on in one’s immediate surroundings) and tuning out annoyances, which sounds a bit like a contradiction. How, the viewer wonders, can one take note of noises and sensations and whatnot while meditating without having those things become a distraction?

I think Stiles would answer my question this way: Observing things, taking note of what is happening and then pushing those sensations into the background of one’s consciousness, is a way of becoming disciplined. She points out that we shouldn’t try to ignore the world when we meditate, nor should we fixate on it. Inner peace can only be achieved when we recognize that distractions exist without being upset by them.

One of the things I really like about this video is hearing Stiles de-emphasize the importance of thinking. Because I think for a living and have been given the mission of helping others become better, more critical thinkers, I tend to be a brain-centric person. Shutting my mind down is something I’m often not very good at, and as a result, I frequently suffer from niggling maladies, like insomnia, which occur when my rogue brain begins running amuck at the precise moment I turn off all the lights and then crawl between the sheets.

If meditating could help me learn to get a little quieter on the inside, I wouldn’t care at all about how loud the outside world got.

This week I’m looking at young American women, the choices they make about how they are going to live their lives, and the role older female mentors can play in helping youngsters make good decisions. I’ve included two CNN videos that work very nicely together. The first one describes a number of societal problems facing young women today, and the second one, which profiles a wonderful woman named Consuelo Castillo Kickbusch, shows how role models can help girls overcome many of the difficulties that they face.

Just a little to set up the first video: Mike Galanos, of CNN, is shown discussing the problem of teen pregnancy at Robeson High School in Chicago with two experts–Dr. Brenda Wade, a clinical psychologist, and Lauren Lake, attorney and co-founder of Women in Entertainment Empowerment Network. The video provides no justification for why CNN chose to focus on this particular school. Anyway, as you’ll see when you watch the video, the numbers of pregnant girls at RHS is indeed high. What I most like about the video is that the experts actually focus their discussion on the larger issue–why so many young women are making so many bad choices, decisions that are likely to limit their abilities to reach their full potential as human beings.

For me, the most telling comment came right toward the end of clip when Ms. Lake asked the following question (I’m paraphrasing): Why don’t we celebrate more people for being intelligent? She then goes on to say that we worship those with sex appeal but show limited appreciation for those who use their brains.

Now, on to video two, which presents a possible solution to the problems we’ve been discussing.

The thing that makes Ms. Kickbusch’s message so persuasive is that it comes out of her ethos, her credibility, as a speaker. She understands her audience and can speak to them with great power because she was among them at one point in her life.

Being an educator and thus someone who has thought long and hard about the larger implications of my work, I can assure you that there is nothing more important to a nation’s security than making sure its young women are well educated and empowered.

Troy Headrick
The American University in Cairo
Maadi, Cairo, Egypt
contact@savvy-women-magazine.com

After rereading my June 29 blog post, it occurs to me that I didn’t spend enough time thinking about the Linda Elder quote I bolded.  The quote I’m referring to is this one:  “Yet the quality of our life and all of the decisions we make depend precisely on the quality of our thought.”

I want to spend a little more time in this week’s entry thinking about that quote and about how our lives are shaped by the thinking that we do.

I truly believe that we all have the power to determine who we want to become and the direction we want our lives to take.  Notice that I used the verb “to become” rather than “to be” in the previous sentence.  “Becoming” suggests growth and change and is a dynamic word.  “Being,” on the other hand, sounds very finished and static.

There have been a few times in my own life when I felt like the Troy that I was just wasn’t the Troy I wanted to be or needed to be.  One of those times came in 1993.  At that time in my life, I was terribly bored and unfulfilled and felt that my life lacked imagination.  I felt empty and alone.  I felt like I needed to undergo something akin to a radical spiritual makeover.

That dissatisfaction with my life prompted me to think about how I might live differently.  I eventually hit upon the idea that I could leave my job, my family, and even my country.  That thought led me to apply to the Peace Corps. Eventually, after passing all the rigorous exams required by the government during the application stage, I was accepted to become a Volunteer trainee.  Washington, D.C. then sent me overseas to live and work in Poland.

That marked the end of the Troy that I was.  A new Troy was born from that experience.

OK, I’ll cut to the chase.  Notice that I bolded “dissatisfaction” and “think” and “idea” two paragraphs earlier.  That’s because the change in my life started as a vague feeling I wasn’t reaching my full potential as a human being.  That feeling then led to the idea (the conception) that I could live differently.  That idea then became a plan which I fleshed out after much soul-searching.  Once I acted upon that plan, I found myself on the path to a spiritual rebirthing.

I truly believe (because I’ve seen it happen several times in my own life) that all of us can literally become new people by re-imagining ourselves.  Thought can lead to action which can then produce transformation and growth.

The important thing is that all renewal begins as an idea of renewal. Linda Elder is right.  The quality of our lives depends upon the quality of the thought we put into living.  Think creatively, and it is more likely that you’ll live creatively too…

What or who would you like to become?