sunisa sunisa | talks to the world

May 15, 2012
by Sunisa
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Analogue Insight

I have loved the word revelation ever since I came across Toni Morrison’s handling of it. Revelation. A most grand, profound thing that when said holds the weight of moments of insight. It encompasses the ecstatic (to revel) and elation, to be lifted up, perhaps in the hope that we are closer to the divine.

If you didn’t know the meaning of the word would you still bow down before the shape of it? I hope so. I’m told by Jewish friends that Hebrew is like that—rich with connotations such that there is a power in a single syllable. To name a beloved one, your child, say, must be a great undertaking.

Thai words come from Sanskrit and Pali and not being a scholar, or having a reason like the SAT throw into use root words—I cannot as easily divine the revelation in Thai words.

Does Rahula , the son of the lord Buddha, share a rah with Ravana, Ravana the demon king of Lanka come to terrorise Rama and Sita? (If you haven’t encountered the Ramayana epic: read it, read it.)

Maybe that roar of a beginning shares a crowning. Being born of high birth. The rah is a potential, to be wasted—or not.

I call this meandering process of meaning-making analogue insight. Unscripted, technically incorrect, but in the musing—there is the poetry, there the power.

I wrote this post by hand, strummed into [re]action by the painstakingly neutronic breakdown of creativity in Jonah Lehrer’s new book. I will keep reading, but also kick into gear for revelation: an awakening larger than myself.

Sunisa

May 8, 2012
by Sunisa
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Women making waves

I went to a conference this weekend expecting to see women who were staid, women who were certain in their careers, telling their wisdom and sharing their steady paths. Instead I saw a university with a legacy of trailblazers. Their women came together to share the sometimes uncertain, always high-flying pivots they have enacted over their lives.

Brown University’s conference celebrating 120 years of women in the university was one of a kind. I say this because it is not every institution, and particularly not every Ivy League institution, aware of its prestige and relative cache, that is willing to open up discussion of the frank choices that women make as they negotiate career advancement and family commitment.

What also impressed me was how much the conference was not about women’s issues. This was not one big rant-fest. Jokes aside, we did not have group therapy sessions. Any griping about the subtly patriarchal workforce was done in side-sessions, probably over morning coffee, because during main session there were other discussions to be had.

Personal highlights for me were hearing from the women in the education plenary: Is the US heading in the wrong direction? Good question—there’s no easy answer—but boy was it satisfying to hear the debate zinging back and forth. I could not tweet fast enough as I wondered whether teachers were the most crucial influencers in schools, what metrics should be used to measure success, and if you’re a teacher with students who don’t come to school, what the system does to your numbers.

Also notable was the 45-minute speech when President Simmons opened up about her upbringing and journey to be the first African American president of the Ivy League. Here in microcosm is what made her a great president: she didn’t dwell on the fact that she is the first such president; instead she wanted to make sure that she wouldn’t be the last. That is the weight of history in the making.

One young person wondered aloud to me if a conference was necessarily women only, given how useful the discussions were. Brave question. She gets to the reverse discrimination of affirmative action there. Here’s my answer:

We all need inroads to transformation, whether it’s a mentor who believes in you, an institution that can lift the burden of student debt from you, or a high school teacher who pushes you to apply for that reach school, because you never know. I wish for a world of more parity, but it is something I am yet to experience. In its absence, I am happy to settle for communities of support, and to celebrate the bravery of women who have gone before me to make this country of relative parity possible.

Still awed,

Sunisa

May 1, 2012
by Sunisa
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Trust serendipity

When I sit down to write these posts, I generally have no idea of what will come. The terror of the blank page beckons. This could be it, I think, the time I choke. I plan to put up a

Back In A Week

sign, my version of

Gone Fishing

should such blockages ensue. So far so good though—lets touch that proverbial wood—and I keep writing, because something pops into my head.

This thought is what made its entrance this week: trust serendipity. It was a note floated from on high, an answer to the fact that I’m about to go to a conference where I will be sharing the wisdom I have accrued in the slim five years since I graduated from university.

What wisdom, right? What do I know now that I didn’t then, and how will I convey it to the gathering in a room celebrating 120 years of educating women at Brown University.

I guess I will say that I know to trust serendipity. That’s my biggest learning. When I graduated from college I thought that I could control my way into a fabulous career, and that hard work, due diligence and an excess of confidence would guarantee my ascension because that is what I had been trained to believe.

It takes a lot of training to get to university. Fifteen years of grades and report cards, extracurriculars and community service, gaming for a slot at a school that continues to pump the bellows of achievement and success, even if Brown’s definition of such storied words are more creative and mellow than at other august institutions. Wrapped up in that training is a certainty that problems are solvable, goals are achievable, and that life is linear, success straight.

When I graduated from college I was all set for an illustrious career in book publishing. Job in hand at a literary agency, I was about to start when I was ambushed, good-naturedly, by Brown alums who heard me speak about social change and challenged me to put work in that field. Trust serendipity, because a chance comment at a café—Have you ever thought about working in social change—can lead to a trajectory well-adjusted.

I am still a storyteller and believer in books, but without the last five years doing rural development in Southeast Asia and working with urban homeless youth in Melbourne Australia, I wouldn’t know quite how electrifying a story can be, transforming a shrug of who cares into a sense that the issue matters, because people over there love their siblings the way people over here do, and in the shared human experience our compassion is what we depend on.

Trust serendipity. It will allow you to follow the breadcrumbs so that when you look back, the dots connect. Call it your gut, call it your guardian angels, but I believe that the chance encounters can be the biggest ones, that the life curve is a sine wave, and opportunity knocks when you least expect it to.

Thanks for tuning in,

Sunisa

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