Connecting with others gives life meaning

I have a penchant for lists: I’m always writing them. Not just writing them, but revising them, reviewing them, and sometimes throwing out entire lists just to rewrite a new one. I read a piece of advice somewhere about making a list of things you like about yourself, things you are proud of in your life and I did this too. It’s a list I occasionally refer to when I’m feeling down on myself and feeling like I have accomplished so little so far. (We are our worst critics, after all.)

That list reminded me of this week’s question: defining my personal vision. Asking me what my personal vision is makes me want to sit down and write a list: one that would be similar to a “Things to Do” list, but would be broader and more connected to abstract notions such as love, peace, making connections and communication.

Because my personal vision includes these things that I cannot touch, but I can feel.

The cover of my journal (or diary) has a picture of a pomegranate tree surrounded by various birds drawn by an Armenian artist and the word “Connect”. The text below reads, in part: “When you’re connected, life takes on meaning, purpose, synchronity. It’s the very real sense of things clicking into place, a hum along the wire. A rootedness. Connection isn’t linear; it’s multidimensional, transcending time and circumstance.” I didn’t write these words, but they are dear to me and encompass my personal vision for my life and the world.

I believe that connecting with another fellow human being is important. That this is the cornerstone of building community and improving the state of the world. No matter how different we may be, we must learn to connect with each other, to be able to communicate and share, to live openly and honestly with ourselves and with each other, to love and make time for peace. These are the pillars of my personal vision though I don’t know if I’ve ever written them down as I did just now.

I want to be a Voices of our Future correspondent because I feel that I need the tools (and the experience of a mentor) to be able to translate my personal vision into action. I would like to practice writing pieces that explore issues in my community and have them foster communication and help me connect with others with which we can mutually share our struggles and perhaps solve them together. I feel that there are too few spaces for women to create and be entirely comfortable in — I believe that Voices of our Future is the program in which those spaces can be found.

I’m not a professional journalist, but I work in a news agency. Sometimes I find that I don’t have enough training to tackle an issue (for example, on the matter of ethics — if something I have written is unacceptable in a news piece), nor the tools and resources to be a better journalist and activist. I feel that Voices of our Future will fill that gap (of insufficient tools and resources) and provide guidance, by way of a mentor.

I have already learned a lot in these 4 weeks of reading and doing the assignments. It has forced me to slow down, sit and think. To go beyond the surface, in my own life (and how I look at it) as well as in the world, since I have had a chance to read others’ stories and journal entries, read and write comments and dialogue with women I have never met but who have been supportive and encouraging through and through.

I really don’t know how to end this post, as it doesn’t feel to me to be an end so much as it is a beginning. “True connection sustains you, carries you forward — and gives you a firm footing in the world.” This is what I feel that Voices of our Future has provided me with and what I hope to achieve through the program.

Here’s to moving forward.