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Finding connections is something I really enjoy.
It is one of the things I love about traveling - that you can go such different places and find similarities. People are people, with hopes and dreams and families and challenges. Places have little things that remind you of other places. But until you go and see and interact with people and places there are things you just don't know or comprehend.
I recently finished listening to an audiobook called I am Malala. It had been on my to-read list for a long time. Listening to that book after an extended trip to Madagascar was insightful. It helped me to connect to things Malala talked about - including just understanding that there are things I can't understand about her specific situation or the places she wrote about since I have not been there or experienced them myself.
But there were so many nuggets of truth, moments of connection, that I loved in this book.
Another reason for the connection comes from a project I've been working on - typing up all my childhood journals. Reading over those words have reminded me what it was like to be in elementary school and junior high. To relive the adventures of changing schools, meeting new people, learning from my teachers and textbooks, but also from my friends and our interactions, big and small.
There are two lines that stood out to me with that context.
Malala shares an experience where a new girl at her school became friends with her and her best friend, Moniba:
Passages from my journal when I was in fifth grade came to mind - moments when there was tension between my "best friend" and her "best friend". I often felt like she wasn't my best friend after all - the proof lying in the fact that she had a different best friend.
Later in the book, Malala shares a cultural phrase that makes me smile:
I've experienced that myself! And it has been interesting to read (sometimes in a lot of detail!) about some of those experiences from my childhood.
Perhaps the most interesting thing to me is the reminder that so many of the things that seem like big deals in the moment are not. And sometimes things we don't even notice at the time shape our life in far reaching ripples.
It is one of the things I love about traveling - that you can go such different places and find similarities. People are people, with hopes and dreams and families and challenges. Places have little things that remind you of other places. But until you go and see and interact with people and places there are things you just don't know or comprehend.
I recently finished listening to an audiobook called I am Malala. It had been on my to-read list for a long time. Listening to that book after an extended trip to Madagascar was insightful. It helped me to connect to things Malala talked about - including just understanding that there are things I can't understand about her specific situation or the places she wrote about since I have not been there or experienced them myself.
But there were so many nuggets of truth, moments of connection, that I loved in this book.
Another reason for the connection comes from a project I've been working on - typing up all my childhood journals. Reading over those words have reminded me what it was like to be in elementary school and junior high. To relive the adventures of changing schools, meeting new people, learning from my teachers and textbooks, but also from my friends and our interactions, big and small.
There are two lines that stood out to me with that context.
Malala shares an experience where a new girl at her school became friends with her and her best friend, Moniba:
... which sometimes caused fights as three is a tricky number.
Passages from my journal when I was in fifth grade came to mind - moments when there was tension between my "best friend" and her "best friend". I often felt like she wasn't my best friend after all - the proof lying in the fact that she had a different best friend.
Later in the book, Malala shares a cultural phrase that makes me smile:
The other girls stirred things up, what we call putting masala on the situation.
I've experienced that myself! And it has been interesting to read (sometimes in a lot of detail!) about some of those experiences from my childhood.
Perhaps the most interesting thing to me is the reminder that so many of the things that seem like big deals in the moment are not. And sometimes things we don't even notice at the time shape our life in far reaching ripples.
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