Let’s Start Changing

August 29, 2013

Our day today started out with finishing Javier Parellada’s morning meeting, which we didn’t get a chance to finish yesterday. We all wrote down three things that we wanted to improve on as a group and 3 activities that we would want to do, as a group, on our weekends. I liked this activity because I believe that in hearing everyone’s opinion about this it is easier to improve as a group and strive for the same goal. I know that we still have to learn a lot about dialogues and having a shared space, but it’s nice to feel that everyone wants something still better and are willing to give a little effort to improve.

Later in our day we had an introduction to what is going to be our art class with Ingrid. I have to say, I really didn’t pay that much attention at the beginning. We later started reading a document that she gave us but I didn’t seem to grasp what most of the paragraphs were talking about. One of the reasons why I think this happened is that I know I don’t like reading that much in Spanish and that it is a little easier for me to read and analyze things in English, but I didn’t know it was that hard. The good thing is that it made me realize that I probably have to reinforce my Spanish reading and start practicing it more. Another of the reasons as to why I believe I did not understand, or want to understand, the reading was that it mentioned at the beginning that it was going to talk about postmodern art, and I don’t really like postmodern art. But now that I think about it, there is good in it too; the only reason why I don’t understand postmodern art is that I don’t really understand it, so maybe the book will help me appreciate it more. On the other hand, I believe that I will really get to enjoy this class. I have always had a passion for art and paintings; I have read and investigated a lot about them, so I told Ingrid that if she ever needed my help with anything in the class, that I would be glad to offer it. I’m glad I did that, because she said she would need it, in helping my classmates with painting.

After lunch we saw a video by Fred Kaufman called Conscious Business. I think that Kaufman said a great amount of interesting things which I will try to apply in my life. One of the things he said that I liked was the comparison between the philosophy of the victim and the philosophy of the player. He described the philosophy of the victim as the times when we tend to blame the things that are out of our control, in order not to take the fault ourselves. He described the philosophy of the player as when we resume the responsibility of something. I had already known that these two ways of reacting to things existed, but I had never analyzed in the way he does. He says that when we use the philosophy of the victim, we lose all our power and that when we use the philosophy of the player we get more power. I believe that this is very true, in the sense that we are making that which we are blaming the bigger and more important thing. Also, as he said if we deny that we had anything to do with the problem; we can’t be part of the solution. But then, how do we know if it is our problem, so we can solve it? As he says, if anything affects us, it is our problem. This made me realize that sometimes we can complain, disagree and get frustrated with many things, but if they are affecting us, then we have to realize that we have to find a solution  to the problem, instead of just standing by. We have to take control of our lives.