reflections

Wherever You Are, Be There. (Moving Advice Part 1)

“What the caterpillar calls the end, the rest of the world calls a butterfly.”~- Lao Tzu

I’m moving this week, and the sheer amount that remains to be done before I leave is making me feel physically ill, and terribly homesick. The best antidote would be a strong cup of tea and Marie biscuits with my Dad, but in lieu of that, I need to write and pray to calm down.

My move last year happened during Ramadan as well, a time when I stressed about which books I should take with me and thought a lot about Robert Frost’s line that “knowing how way leads on to way/I doubted if I should ever come back”, because I didn’t like the scenario he presented.

It’s not that I wanted to stay home; I was excited about Toronto and all the learning and growth the city would bring, but it upset me to think how places and people change over time, and that coming back to Vancouver in the future would likely be very different. For a long time, my concern that the city, the people and I all would change (and indeed I discovered in my first few visits all those things happened) meant I spent a lot of time in first year “looking down one (path) as far as a I could/To where it bent in the undergrowth” trying to understand if urban planning was right for me.

Right now I’m leaving my downtown neighbourhood, and I feel very sentimental about the nearby coffeeshops, our beautiful morning walks, leaving the cosiness of the apartment, and saying goodbye to all the other things that have become so beloved in the past twelve months.

Part of the reason I find change challenging is that I’ve always made very big decisions very quickly without a proper understanding of what they mean. It’s not the decision making method that needs work, but when you make choices without a full knowledge of what it is you’re committing to, you eventually reach a point where you go through a process of analysis and ask yourself: now that I understand this more fully, is this still a good choice? The danger though is to feel unsatisfied with your answers because constant uncertainty prevents you from participating fully in your own life.

The year before I graduated from undergrad I attended the Political Science convocation as a member the faculty procession (ah the joys of student government!). In the ceremony, Professor Toope, the president of UBC said:

“Realizing that life is a gift comes with the corollary feeling that the gift should not be hoarded. It comes with the feeling of wanting to give oneself away to worthy work, in marriage, in love, to God. And it comes with the question: is this person, this work, this nation worthy of the gifts I have to give?”

Which is not to say I have tremendous gifts to share, but the questions are crucial, and since that year I’ve often thought about Professor Toope’s words. Grad school though has taught me that the answers to these questions do not come through sitting and thinking, they can only emerge when you’re fully engaged in meaningful work and experiences. So to myself, on the beginning of exciting and challenging new chapters, my advice is to be gentle and stay rooted while the answers to these questions unfold. Stay committed and present in your choices. Commit to whatever you’re doing. If you live in a city, live there fully for as long as you are meant to be there. Don’t suffer from paralysis by analysis. If you’re working a job, be there fully during the workday. There may be multiple things going on in your life, but think about them when you are done with your work. Focus on striving for excellence. If you are studying, study with all your heart. If you’re trying to be a person of religious practice, practice and don’t waver.  Don’t shuffle off to your prayers.  Muster up energy and you’ll be able to bring more energy to what you do. Be present and there in everything you do.

I finally understand what friends were telling me last year, that it’s critical to decide who and what you want to be, what you want your life to be about, and then make decisions to get you there.  And some things are mutually exclusive options, you can’t have everything, so decisions are unavoidable. To not decide is a decision that doesn’t move you forward or allow you to be where you are.

Inclusion is About Listening to Each Other’s Stories

On Friday night, I went to a TEDxToronto Salon titled “The Immigrant” at the Scadding Court Community Centre. And out of everything that happened that night, from the lovely discussion,the great speakers, the moving spoken word performances and the beautiful markets, it is Teresa Toten remark that inclusion is about telling and listening to each other’s stories that resonated with me the most.

Because it’s a beautiful answer. I spent Canada Day in Ottawa, and although the weekend was full of meeting interesting new people and catching up with old kindred spirits, it had a rough beginning. My train ride was 2 hours longer than expected, the bus downtown was stuck in traffic for ages, and when I finally crossed the road on that hot hot day to drop off my things, a jeep of people shouted out, “Hey! Hey you! Don’t you know you’re in Canada and it’s Canada Day? It’s not Halloween!”

For the rest of the evening and weekend, though the thought “I can’t believe someone didn’t like my pretty hijab!” remained, it was on the train ride home that I began to think about the experience more, and to wonder: when something negative happens, what causes one to either laugh about the experience or to feel less connected from those around them as a result? So much discussion about diverse communities centers on the idea that one must simply integrate and become part of the community in which they live, but what actually makes that experience possible? Is integration and involvement merely a one -sided responsibility?

On the train I realised that it is because I was able to share my story that  my weekend was salvaged. I spent Canada Day with the friends of a friend, and witnessed remarkable behaviour and understanding that day. Despite religions being different, I saw friends wait for others to finish praying, I heard friends listen carefully to what each other wanted to do and try to accommodate it, and received so much kindness during the day that the good I felt far outweighed any bad that had happened earlier.  The isolated incident in the jeep was categorised correctly in my mind, as simply an unfortunate, random thing that had occurred, and not representative of Ottawa as a whole.

In Karen Armstrong’s remarks at Toronto Public Library’s Appel Salon earlier this year, she mentioned that before she passed away  the Mother Superior at her convent spoke to her and gave her encouraging words, and in the years afterwards when she found herself struggling, the memory of that incident was a comfort.  The point of the story was that your words and how you behave to someone stays with them long after the conversation between you is over, and you can have a deep impact on someone without even realizing it.

I agree. Without those ambassadors of Ottawa, my understanding of the city may have been different, but the point is true beyond visiting new places.  I ‘ve always had a strange talent for attracting questions in awkward places, and sometimes these inquiries are not made by kind questioners, (though that moment in Ottawa was probably the most explicitly Islamophobic moment I’ve ever experienced) but I’ve also always had incredible people around me. From parents, siblings, teachers, to mentors at work, roommates in university, and friends in undergrad and beyond, I’ve been blessed with people who have enriched my life tremendously through their behaviour, their listening and their attempts  to understand. Without people to help me cope with moments and questions I’d often rather live without, it might have been much harder to grow up as someone who cares about being engaged.

Similarly I think, the answer to building healthy inclusive communities lies with all of us. It is not simply up to some people to decide to feel included, it’s not about overcoming cultural or religious ideas, it’s about creating space for us to listen to each other so we all feel heard, and that our words have meaning. It’s about meeting each other halfway by stepping out of our respective comfort zone. We all need to help build communities where participation is valuable. We all need to be kind enough that it stays with people we encounter, regardless of anything else they come across.


An Adventure in Mastering Yourself Part Two: Wherever You Go, There You Are

Greetings friends! Continuing my reflections on what year one of my masters has taught me ( post one is here), a key lesson of this year has been that if you want to create change, you need a realistic map of how to get there.

It’s taken a while to learn this. Before I moved, I wondered about where and with whom I was going to live, what classes I was going to take, the number of books I could possibly fit into my suitcase, Toronto’s weather, whether I would make any friends, what life would be like without daily sightings of mountains.. you name it, it was on the radar of things that I thought and prayed about every day. In the midst of  my uncertainty and questions, I saw a Bollywood film that I felt was the universe speaking to me through celluloid, and it seemed like song sequences in the film that showed the heroine initially nervous to explore her city but fifteen minutes later happily cooking, exploring new neighbourhoods and fulfilling her writerly dreams, could possibly describe my life in Toronto. Though nervous, I too would become Super Shagufta, a person who easily mastered all the things I previously found difficult.

And while in many ways that’s been true, because this year has been the loveliest and most interesting year I’ve ever had, as a principle it doesn’t work.Recently I was at a two day course about Islamic law as it pertains to daily living, and the instructor pointed out near the end of the class that simply knowing something is a good thing to do or an area you need improvement is not sufficient to actually bring that change about. At the time he was speaking about keeping in touch with your extended family and friends, and he noted that if you weren’t very good at keeping in touch before, you wouldn’t walk away from the class with new habits unless you made a plan about how to incorporate those goals into your day. In any area of your life, once you’ve identified areas that need work, what is necessary is to make a plan about how you’re going to implement those changes. (So in the example above, he suggested making a plan of all the people you want to keep in contact with that you haven’t spoken to in a while, and then scheduling weekly calls into your calendar to end that distance).

Super simple lesson, but his words really resonated. At the beginning of each term I made ambitious lists of all the things that I find difficult, (whether making time for the gym, being less introverted or mustering up more enthusiasm for the kitchen) and then in my spare time I naturally gravitated to things that I love, whether public lectures, or theatre, or reading or long chats over tea, and didn’t really think about how things I didn’t naturally like would become part of the fabric of my life. Because the list was so long it was overwhelming, but making an action plan and picking one or two priorities at a time would have made more sense.

An Adventure in Mastering Yourself:The Subtle Difference Between Hope and Expectation

It’s my ten month anniversary of living in Toronto on July 1st and I’m celebrating with a visit to Ottawa, a city I last visited ten years ago. And as part of my celebration, I want to reflect on some of the lessons and learning of this year to help create a second year that is even richer and more meaningful than the first. (Deo volente, I’ll be sharing some of these lessons in entries to come, so stay tuned).

First and foremost, I’ve realised this year that instead of expecting perfection, one must simply hope for beneficial experiences and positive people because challenges are inevitable and real life is always different to what we imagine. (And as a side note what is best may not be something that you thought about previously). Being steadfastly hopeful and fiercely optimistic without specific expectations towards present people/places/experiences or without imagining how future events will unfold prevents you from feeling disappointed, because hope is an understanding that there is no guaranteed outcomes. The hope that things will go well (and an understanding that there will likely be tough bits that will require new ways of thinking and being to get through) also means that you’re less likely to be frustrated while you adjust to new situations and your mental muscles tear and become stronger. In general, the more specific and greater your expectations are, the harder it is to recognise the beauty of what you actually experience.

I discovered this lesson the hard way, because although my graduate experience and time in Toronto has been full of new people, self-discovery, happiness, and moments of standing very far outside my comfort zone, instead of taking each day as it came and being gentle with myself through the adjustment process, my first few months I analysed my experience a lot, because I had expected that there would be no dull classes, no readings I didn’t find fascinating, no moments of indecision, no instance when my enthusiasm would flag, no days where I would feel homesick, and really, no moments where I didn’t enjoy the struggle and the strife. I expected each paper to be a learning adventure because graduate school is a very deliberate choice, and anything other than bliss felt like cause for concern.

Eventually, I realised I was experiencing what Alain de Botton describes in  “The Art of Travel” when he speaks about why travel frequently turns out differently than what we imagine. He reflects on the  sentence “they journeyed through the afternoon” and notes that such a short sentence does not encapsulate everything involved in that trip: the waiting in the train, the boredom, the heat, the delays, the hunger when food is not available and so forth.We simply look at pretty brochures, and we forget the periods that aren’t photographed. And yet life is the photographed and the non photographed moments, it is the destinations we know we want to visit, and it is the unexpected neighbourhood cafes we stumble upon on the walk home. It is sunshine and rain. Sticking to precise routes and expecting endless joy is unreasonable, but with an open perspective personal growth and self mastery are hopes with the potential to be realised.

No Matter What the Weather Is, It’ll Always Change

I haven’t been well for the past few weeks, and instead of being a focused paper-writing machine, I’ve barely been able to stay awake. The few hours each day I haven’t been asleep have been filled with sneezing and coughing and trying to keep my fever down. It’s been awful to have such little control over my consciousness and health, and instead of bright eyes and a smile, to see a pale, exhausted person whenever I catch sight of my reflection.

The result has been much resolution- making to be a kinder, gentler and more grateful person. It’s been a negotiation of sorts. If I can only stay awake I say in my waking moments, I will refrain from complaining, I will be less impatient, I will cherish small moments, and I will focus on growing and learning as much as I can.

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Is Resilience Just a First World Concept?

While you were doing the World Cafe, people were marching in Tahrir Square. And they aren’t protesting because Mubarak is a bad leader, that is beside the point, they are protesting because people in that country didn’t think about  the issues you are thinking about.  Back when the protestors were two years old, people in that country didn’t think about what they would grow up and do, and this is what happens when young men have nothing to do. So that’s why you see protests across the Middle East right now.”~ Craig Applegath, CAPS-ACEAU.

The final keynote speaker said these words a few minutes before the conclusion of the Canadian Association of Planning Students annual conference, and I’m still surprised it happened. Given the fact that many countries ( the US etc) have supported the Egyptian dictatorship for so many years and have been so timid in supporting the Egyptian people during the recent events, this is a simply inaccurate and inappropriate way to describe what has been going on.

More than it just being a crazy thing to say though, I mention the example of Egypt because it perfectly describes a wider problem with the CAPS conference this year. The discussion of resilience was incredibly simplistic.

I say this because in March 2010 I attended the 2nd Annual UBC School of Community and Regional Planning Symposium about Planning for Resilience, and over the course of an amazing two days, the conference showcased sessions about diverse topics ranging from planning for housing in Mumbai, to the relationship between social media and planning and resilience, to disaster management in North Vancouver, to just so so much more. Before the conference we were sent required readings that related to the keynote speakers, and Mark Holland sent us his Resilient Cities and Regenerative Regions Manifesto.  It was and still is, one of the most powerful things I’ve ever read. I blogged about a few key points here on Terry last year, but really the whole Manifesto is well worth a careful reading.

In Mark Holland’s work, his principles about the relationship between us and other places include:

  • “Everything is connected and that the dispassionate karma of the earth offers a reaction for every one of our actions;
  • That we must transform our cities from a parasitic to a symbiotic relationship with our all other species in the world;
  • That the scale of change we need can only be realized when we work together to coauthor a future that fits us all;
  • .. because there is no “social out there” any more than there is an ecological “out there”,  we must confront our fears and work to heal those who have been hurt or have hurt us ‐ for pain is a virus that is passed on until it is confronted and healed – and while in action, it hurts all species.

and later on in the Manifesto it says:

I will open to the pain that I cause in the world through my ignorance and fear and the distance I seem to have from my internal dignity and nobility, and I will feel the pain, shock and injustice of participating in the death of so many, if only by accident – and then I will move past that grief to the restless serenity of my responsibility – to my planet, to my community, to my family, and to myself;”

The key point: We are a source of harm and have a responsibility to rectify our actions because we are all connected. This idea is clearly evident throughout the whole document which emphasizes that while yes we must focus on building healthy communities, this can only happen when we are engaged and committed to building resilience everywhere.

At CAPS however, Thomas Homer Dixon noted in his presentation that it is very likely that Israel will invade Iran in the next five years, and that would cause disturbances in our energy supply, so we need to be ready for that. In other parts of his presentation he spoke about the need to de-couple and reduce energy dependency, and it seemed as thoug attacks in other places ok is long as long as we aren’t affected. Surely we don’t care about populations merely when our own survival is threatened.

So while withstanding shocks was spoken about, thinking deeply about reducing the occurrence of human produced shocks in the first place was not.  This is a shame because if we are concerned about fluctuations in access to oil from the Middle East due to conflict, our discussion is incomplete if we don’t talk about reducing conflict in the first place. It is a bit like trying to give a patient a pill for a fever, without thinking holistically about what is making the body sick in the first place.

It reminded me of the work of Scott McMurray, (one of the keynote speakers who actually was phenomenal), who said:

“Interdisciplinary work helps us avoid what Kenneth Burke called “trained incapacity,” which is a kind of blindness associated with being deep but not very wide. Despite the risks, we should step outside of the metaphors and narratives that form our intellectual safe zones as often as we can”.

And as much as I enjoyed meeting cool people, the experience of presenting my research, the humour and warmth of the Professional Panel, and the dynamic mobile tours, sadly, the conference discussion of resilience by a few of the keynote speakers did feel lacking. We all know energy is a problem, we all know climate changing is happening and that we need to think about food, but you’re only saying something  innovative and meaningful when we think about the system, the planet as a whole.

To illustrate, what wasn’t discussed was that as first world industrialized countries  we actively produce shocks in other places, and a real difference exists between places in terms of their capacity to plan for resilience.  A resilient city we were told, has “sustainable energy flows, maximizes flexibility, is about local self sufficiency, reduces redundancy of systems while still ensuring diversity of systems, and has a decentralized system (in addition to one more attribute related to the environment). On an international scale though, there are real impediments to places implementing these characteristics; foreign policy gets in the way. One of the panel presenters responded to a question about planning in Africa and noted that in Durban they got tired of what the World Bank was saying their cities had to look like, and so they created their own plan in response. Think of the capacity of places like Palestine, Pakistan, Iraq etc etc to do the same.  The whole Gaza flotilla crisis was about enabling basic supplies to enter Palestine in order to reduce the fragility of the Palestinian people and ensure basic human rights. The policies of our governments often create barriers for other nations to achieve resiliency.

Finally, we never spoke about the impact our work to become more resilient will have on the rest of the world. As we try to revitalize local manufacturing and increase local food production, what does that mean for other places? Wouldn’t that create ripple effects and create external shocks?  That doesn’t mean resilience planning isn’t important, but we do need to understand the wider picture.

In sum, without a description of power, the model is not helpful at best, and at most is scarily preservationist. The result is a world with resilient pockets and non resilient pockets, which is perhaps a recipe for an overall non resilient world, a world that is constantly generating shocks that we will be forced to respond to.

Difference is a Good Thing (A Peek into my Non-Family Household)

We had a discussion at home the other day about whether or not we choose our friends. I was convinced we do, but afterwards realised that the Roommate was right. We don’t really choose them, it’s more that life itself chooses our friends for us. At least that’s how it’s always worked for me. In nearly all the people who I consider close and dear, our meeting is an unusual story, and extraordinary timing and coincidence (being in a particular place on a particular day for instance) played a role in how we became important parts of each other’s lives.

The Roommate and I are no different. In the weeks leading to my departure for Toronto, I spent huge amounts of time on Craigslist and Viewit.ca and Kijji and Padmapper and all sorts of other apartment hunting sites trying to find a place that I liked enough to commit to. For the most part, listings would read: “Most AMAZING apartment ever! Beautiful, sun filled, spacious, and an incredible deal! Close to everything, food, transit, the city, the university etc”. And then I would actually look at pictures, and it would invariably be a small dark apartment with an unpleasant colour of walls, and some dude’s lumpy mattress in the middle of the room. After a while, I could no longer distinguish one listing from another, time was ticking by and I was really no closer to finding a place.

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A City is a Lot of People

When I see people in the hallway, at the grocery store, on the subway, walking downtown late at night or in any other space in which we see strangers, I wonder about them. I wonder where they live, where they work and what their hopes and ambitions are. I wonder whether they live with people they love, whether they’ve always lived in Toronto, and I imagine their challenges and their joys and disappointments. Yesterday after my night class I had one such moment when I turned to pick up my bags at the grocery store, and the coherence of the purchases of the man behind me caught my eye. A tiny package of Vector cereal. Four bright yellow bananas wrapped in plastic. Two firm red tomatoes. An apple. Sometimes it is something as simple as someone’s shopping purchases that gives clues to who they are, and the combination of firmly deciding to Eat Healthy but not stocking up on groceries left me curious to know more.

More than individual stories though, I wonder how I could ever take part in planning for a city without knowing about its heart and soul.

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Small p planning

Similarly, Otto von Bismarck said, “Faust complained about having two souls in his breast, but I harbor a whole crowd of them and they quarrel. It is like being in a republic.” In that sense, the first step to dealing with procrastination isn’t admitting that you have a problem. It’s admitting that your “you”s have a problem.

I was exploring Hart House the other day and found a lovely room filled with magazines called “The Hub”, and so sat down to eat my lunch over a recent edition of the New Yorker. And while I was reading, I came across a lovely article about procrastination (ironically, putting off readings in the process) by James Surowiecki. You can read the full article here.

What are your thoughts? What do you think the reasons are for procrastination? Is it a planning fallacy or simply a case of divided selves? Or something else entirely perhaps?

Expanding the Boundaries of My Heart (Reflections From Seven Weeks In)

Every day, my love for this city deepens.  I always thought the boundaries of my heart started and ended in Vancouver, but the past seven weeks have taught me that this is not the case. It is possible to hold multiple loves within you, and this openness to new and different things enriches your life and strengthens your love of each individual thing as a result. It’s been an astonishing, life changing revelation. I feel like I could live anywhere now, (or at the very least, can imagine myself in more than the west coast in the future) and am not as hesitant to try new things.

And now that I’m feeling more settled, I feel like I have so much to share about my adventures thus far!  A complete summary is impossible, but it’s been a rich and learning filled few weeks. I’ve fasted the last few days of Ramadhan on my own, celebrated my birthday away from family for the first time, set up my new room (yay IKEA!), met lots of interesting people (and possibly a few kindred spirits), missed my brother’s birthday, befriended the TTC and the GO train, went to the U of T’s Graduate Student Orientation, celebrated my first solo Eid  (and went to Eid prayer for the first time), explored campus, caught a cold, went to a Shakespeare play, went to Nuit Talks, attended an incredible dialogue session with the Governor General, attended the ballet, participated in Word on the Street, went to Friday prayer for the first time (minus conferences), visited Montreal, attended many campus lectures, consumed heaps of tea, wandered a great deal, and in sum, while doing the million and one things involved in settling and becoming used to a new place, have been learning new things and confirming old things about myself every day.

It’s been a challenging, fascinating, frustrating, and beautiful experience, and since it  was my seven week annniversary in the city a few days ago, in no particular order, here is a bit of what I’ve been thinking about since I’ve arrived.  (Amazing how time goes so quickly).

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