Pardon me while I pour myself a glass or three of wine

I can't help but be inspired by those people who have this sense of enlivening resilience and determination about them to do anything and everything they set their mind to.

Just today I met this very unique man: a charmer, an entrepreneur, MD, JD, (insert any other occupation/credential you can think of). Post med-school/residency, and after over a decade ingrained in the healthcare field, he decided to enroll himself into law school...thrice. Needless to say, after both med-school and his third and last attempt at law school, this doctor was knee-deep in debt with an MD and JD-in-hand. This man became both a practicing healthcare physician and attorney and sits as chairman at a top-tiered hierarchy of everything healthcare-law related here in Los Angeles.

While I do believe one's degrees or credentials isn't necessarily a predicate or defining measure of one's worth or intellectual prowess, I do always appreciate people who take another stab at the wonderful world of academia-- whether it is to further one's career or to lessen-the-unfortunate-blow of one's own intellectual shortcomings, I always appreciate a head-strong, determined academic. Financially, mentally, and physically speaking, it takes a toll just to get a single degree. Clearly this doctor's path was not so easy.

When I asked this doctor which practice he preferred, he said he enjoyed being a physician far more than, well, pushing papers (fine..I may or may not have misconstrued what he said about what it *really* means to be a practicing attorney ;) ).

When I asked this doctor what made him decide to pursue two very different and challenging careers, I thought he'd say something along the lines of how it was his deep-seated childhood dream to become a money-making, power-house hot-shot, dotting "i's".. crossing "t's"... and saving lives. I then took another moment to realize that this thought-process was likely a manifestation of all of my deepest and darkest desires. Lol what?

His answer: "I did not know what to choose, I couldn't decide, so I chose both."

While some of you (and by "some" I mean my sum total one Facebook reader: hi mom) may think the moral of this very long-winded story is that you can do anything you set your mind to or that some other relevant cliche applies here...

I'd say the true moral of the story is: being indecisive isn't so bad. =]

The Paradox of Our Time

"The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings, but shorter tempers; wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints; we spend more, but have less; we buy more, but enjoy it less.

We have bigger houses and smaller families; more conveniences, but less time; we have more degrees, but less sense; more knowledge, but less judgment; more experts, but more problems; more medicine, but less wellness.

We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, laugh too little, drive too fast, get angry too quickly, stay up too late, get up too tired, read too seldom, watch TV too much, and pray too seldom.

We have multiplied our possessions, but reduced our values. We talk too much, love too seldom, and hate too often. We've learned how to make a living, but not a life; we've added years to life, not life to years.

We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet the new neighbor. We've conquered outer space, but not inner space; we've done larger things, but not better things.

We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul; we've split the atom, but not our prejudice.

We write more, but learn less; we plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait; we have higher incomes, but lower morals; we have more food, but less appeasement; we build more computers to hold more information to produce more copies than ever, but have less communication; we've become long on quantity, but short on quality.

These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion; tall men, and short character; steep profits, and shallow relationships. These are the times of world peace, but domestic warfare; more leisure, but less fun; more kinds of food, but less nutrition.

These are days of two incomes, but more divorce; of fancier houses, but broken homes. These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality, one-night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from cheer to quiet to kill."

By Dr. Bob Moorehead
"The Paradox Of Our Time"

I always wonder

"I always wonder why birds stay in the same place when they can fly anywhere on Earth. Then I ask myself the same question." - Harun Yahya

Oakland Community Builders

One of my former students from Berkeley just emailed me to let me know that my UCB community organizing class inspired her to pursue labor organizing.. so much so that she's now officially going to work as an organizer-in-training at the UPTE Local in NJ.

Best e-mail of the year. 

The Root Of The Problem

In China today: 22 children and 1 adult injured in knife attack versus
In the U.S.: 18-some children and 9 other people shot dead.

"That's the difference between a knife and a gun...guns don't attack children; psychopaths and sadists do."

While I disagree with the article's notion that there is "nothing to be done," I do believe that gun legislation/control isn't the answer and we certainly should not reinvigorate the anti-gun movement. Sadists, psychopaths, the mentally disturbed, etc. will always find other ways to wreak havoc-- much like the knife-murderer in China. Let's think of other practical and more efficient solutions, perhaps community-wide strategies that can help support people and foster growth, positivity, and effective communication and openness amongst members of our respective communities. I believe that's a far better approach than instituting laws that don't really deter a (mentally incapacitated or troubled) criminal.

Instituting gun control and infringing upon or limiting our "democratic" right to bear arms at the hope of *potentially* deterring these criminals seems sort of...counter-intuitive? What's to say that these criminals don't find alternative methods to harm: bombs/grenades, poisoning/chemical weapons (we all can't forget the Anthrax scare), and we can even stretch it as far as to include the pervasive act of bullying that has subsequently lead to hundreds and thousands of suicides every year. Our society's mental and physical desensitization to caring for others, of camaraderie and open-communication is what is preventing mass-murdering criminals from growing up in loving, caring, supportive environments. All I'm saying is-- gun control might not be the answer, and to restrict or forbid possession of such will only likely open the floodgates to alternate measures.

The Buddha

"The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him, he is always doing both."

Remember remember the SIXTH of November
Of voting and feeling distraught
I see no reason why this election season
Should ever be forgot...

~r

Bittersweet

“Finishing a book is bittersweet. You spend days getting to know the characters. Learning their nuances, their faults, their loves, their lives. They become your friends, acquaintances, enemies. And after the story ends, you miss them. You look for them in your own life, wonder where they’ve gone, you forget that they aren’t real. You fall in love with the hero and dream of him at night. The strange girl becomes your best friend. Their heartaches become your heartaches. You laugh when they laugh. And cry when they die. Eventually you realise they aren’t a part of your world, you were just briefly visiting theirs.” 

~

a half finished book is, after all, a half finished love affair 

Is it really in the eye of the beholder?

Ever since she was 10, Nadia begged her mother for an operation to pin her ears back so that her peers at school would stop bullying her and calling her Dumbo for her "elephant ears." Read the article here. Four years later, a charity provides Nadia with a free otoplasty, but they don't stop there- adding on to the laundry list of corrective, elective surgeries rhinoplasty and mentoplasty, all totaling $40k. 

At the risk of sounding insensitive, my initial reaction to this was disappointment. Want to deal with the psychological effects of bullying by resorting to surgery? Fine. Join the 90 thousand other teens who went under the knife for cosmetic surgery in 2007. But, courtesy of a charity foundation, deciding to add on a bucket list of multiple corrective and cosmetic measures to fit a certain mold of aesthetic "beauty" defined in the eyes of our American culture and society is..well-- sad.

                                                                                                                         ~Ro