Change Starts Within

I try to encourage everyone to lead a more healthy and active lifestyle.

It seems though, as the old saying goes: Never a prophet in your land, that people in North America, people in my community, are too blase and jaded to appreciate the values I try to instill. What matters around here are trends, what is popular at the moment. People will spend such time trying to be exceptional, to be seen, to be heard, to make a difference on the outside, as though what matters to them is not their personal growth but outside appreciation.

This led me to a sort of scorn of people; apart for a rare few, I do not attempt to teach or show my values, the value of honest hard work and taking better care of oneself not for show, not for glory, but simply to feel better in one's skin, to empower yourself.

The rest of the world is unimportant, what they think is useless to you if you can master yourself, motivate yourself, live for yourself.

No trend, no craze or fad should ever come in the way of what is true and real.

However recently, I was coaxed out of my bubble by a young teacher from Bangla Desh, who made me teach those values I have to his class, and even to himself.

This experience has had a very positive effect on his class, and on himself, and almost against my own will, myself.

To be told that I inspire others, that I make a difference, that my lifestyle motivates others to take better care of themselves, has truly changed my outlook of the world.

If I can make a small difference halfway across the world, showing a few exercises to willing and eager-to-learn children, well perhaps I should not have given up so quickly with the people next door.

I don't expect the next few months to be easy in any way, because change, willing it and making it happen, demands a lot of implication.

Considering the barriers now set because of the pandemic, rallying a group that would be interested in learning how to exercise, how to be self-motivated, seems like an insurmountable barrier.

At the same time, Learning and Teaching to be more independent, more responsible, more aware of the world around us, its needs which are intricately linked to our own.

I have the dream that I could achieve something there, working with children because they are the most open to new ideas and concepts, they rediscover the old concepts that were tried, tested and true before, then discarded to make way for what is profitable, what looks shiny but in fact is destroying more than building. Children rediscover these concepts and can appreciate them to their full value, if they have not been too influenced by social media and tiktok trendings.

I want to show them to tend the land as much as tend to themselves, I want to show them the value of simple things, because those are to me the truest things.

I think that this will be very challenging for me , to push my limits and dare to hope that some people out there will be willing to listen to me where I make sense, like that classroom and teacher did in Bangla Desh.

Dare to hope that there is still hope for us as a whole society, that we are not too far gone...

I don't want to move mountains, I don't want to change the world; it's hard enough for me to just envision trying to make a dent.

My dream is small but that is how the best things start, small.

From the tiniest seed will grow the largest tree.