Student Discernment | Aaron Danowski

On my journey to discover my calling and to change the world, I’ve realized that oftentimes I can’t explain why I feel so compelled to work for change. If someone inquires, I usually tell them I have a deep sense of empathy for the downcast and the oppressed, probably instilled in me by my lifelong Christian faith and my Jesuit education infused with social justice. As I’ve grown more familiar with the environmental movement in recent months, I think I’ve found a way to articulate my motivation more clearly by describing how I achieve fulfillment and wellbeing versus how society tells me I can achieve wellbeing. In the deepest fibers of my being, I believe that my wellbeing is tied to the wellbeing of not only my friends and family, but of everyone on the planet, as well as the planet itself. I feel connected to everyone, intimately related to every animal, and inextricably linked to nature itself. When a forest is clear-cut, when a species goes extinct, or when my actions (including my purchases) result in the harm or exploitation of a fellow human being, I feel like I am in a way inflicting self-harm and committing spiritual suicide.

Unfortunately, the modern world that surrounds me tells me that I am crazy for feeling this way. It labels people like me “eco-freaks,” “hippies,” and “social justice warriors,” all things which are seen as moderately derogatory. Instead of telling me everything is interconnected, modern society tells me that I am separate from every other human being, and completely separate from nature. It tells me the Earth is full of resources that I ought to harness and bend to my will, not gifts and miracles that I ought to revere as sacred. It tells me that I must compete with other people in order to earn money, gain power, or achieve status. And it tells me that only by acting out of self-interest can I protect myself from being deceived, conned, and taken advantage of. Everything society tells me hinges on my willingness to accept that I am an individual, and that self-interest and competition are the name of the game. Anyone who believes or acts differently is merely kidding themselves.

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It hasn’t always been like this. In fact, for most of human history humanity recognized its deep connection to ourselves and the natural world around us. In many traditional cultures, concepts of a deep spiritual connection between humans and a deep bond with the wider world are commonplace. As Thomas Berry describes in his book “The Dream of the Earth,” “Our relationships with the earth [must] involve something more than pragmatic use, academic understanding, or aesthetic appreciation. A truly human intimacy with the earth and with the entire natural world is needed…. Such intimacy with the universe we find with the Omaha Indians. When a child is born, the Omaha declare its newborn presence to the entire universe. First they address the sun, the moon, the stars, and every being that moves in the heavens, declaring: ‘In your midst has come a new life. Consent ye, we implore! Make its path smooth, that it may reach the brow if the first hill.’ Then to the atmospheric world, to the winds, clouds, rain, mist, and all that moves in the air. Then to the hills, valleys, rivers, lakes, trees, and grasses. Finally, ‘Ye birds, great and small, that fly through the air. Ye animals, great and small, that dwell in the forest. Ye insects that creep among the grasses and burrow in the ground, I beg ye all to hear me. Consent ye, we implore! Make its path smooth. Then shall it travel beyond the four hills.’” (p 13-14)

Another beautiful passage from Berry’s book explains that “There is need for a great courtesy toward the earth. Such courtesy we might learn from the Iroquois. Their thanksgiving ritual is one of the most superb ceremonies that humans have ever known. Too long to present in its entirety, it does have a refrain that is relevant here: ‘We return thanks’ – first to our mother, the earth, which sustains us, then on to the rivers and streams, to the herbs, to the corn and beans and squashes, to bushes and trees, to the wind, to the moon and stars, to the sun, and finally to the Great Spirit who directs all things. To experience the universe with such sensitivity and such gratitude! These are primary experiences of an awakening human consciousness. “ (p 14)

All across Sub-Saharan Africa, the concept that human beings are all family and that we share a deep spiritual bond with one another type is referred to as Ubuntu. As one of my favorite professors at Gonzaga, Fr. Patrick Baraza, puts it, the concept of Ubuntu can be explained by the phrase “I am because we are,” or “A person is a person through other people.” Ubuntu is the very essence of collaboration and cooperation, and the very opposite of competition. It is the fundamental recognition of the duty and responsibility each person has to assure that the people around them are taken care of and respected. As Archbishop Desmond Tutu writes in his book “No Future Without Forgiveness,” “Ubuntu… speaks of the very essence of being human…. A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.”

The belief that the wellbeing of all living things are connected is shared by the cultural philosophies of the Omaha, the Iroquois, and traditional African communities across the continent. These philosophies resonate with our most authentic self, beneath the layers of cultural conditioning that we have been subjected to. Those of us who feel estranged from nature and each other in this modern world yearn for this cultural philosophy to permeate our everyday lives.

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How did we stray away from these ancient concepts of interconnectedness and oneness with nature? Is there any hope of overcoming the self-interest omnipresent in modern society and return to a more communal notion of human existence and oneness with the earth?

To answer these questions, I find it necessary to understand the origins of self-interest and estrangement from nature, specifically in the historical roots of American capitalism and consumerism. When Adam Smith published his book The Wealth of Nations in 1776, he explained that individuals pursuing their own self-interest in a capitalist society unconsciously serve the benefit of society as a whole. Self-interested producers, he argued, will make the things that people will pay a premium to obtain, thus guaranteeing them a hefty profit for every item sold. As a result, society benefits because the unmet needs of consumers are met by the self-interested producers. When this theory is played out in real life, however, there is one major problem: although the needs of individuals are generally met, producers become greedy and seek out ways to obtain more money from consumers. This can include colluding with competitors or creating monopolies to drive up the prices of goods artificially and earn more profit for themselves. By the late 1800s, American society found itself being run by industrialists amassing huge fortunes through monopolistic or flat-out unethical business practices, such as John D. Rockefeller (Standard Oil), Andrew Carnegie (Carnegie Steel), J.P. Morgan (banking), Leland Stanford (railroads), and Henry Ford (cars). Historians would later call this period the “Robber Barron Age.”

At the turn of the 19oos, powerful industrialists and big business owners started looking for ways to increase consumers demand for products themselves. Business owners had created the infrastructure to produce massive amounts of products, but there was no way of guaranteeing there would be enough customers to buy them… unless they took drastic measures to create demand where there otherwise wouldn’t be. In a 1927 article in the Harvard Business Review, the banker Paul Mazur of Lehman Brothers described the situation by saying that “We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture. People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”

America was turned from a needs to a desires culture by Edward Bernays, the nephew of Sigmund Freud, who developed the field of public relations in the 1920s to create public desire for specific products. Bernays had previously served on the Committee on Public Information during World War I, which had been in charge of creating propaganda support the war effort. When Bernays attended the Paris Peace Conference with President Woodrow Wilson in 1919, he was shocked to see how effective their message had been: the crowds that greeted him and the President showered them with adulation and hailed them as heroes. Upon his return to the US, he set out to make his fortune by implementing this same technique for manipulating public perception in the corporate world, mainly by using his uncle’s study of psychoanalysis to pair products with people’s deep, unmet desire for power, acceptance, beauty, and so on. By 1927, public relations had become deeply engrained in the business world, so much so that one journalist wrote “A change has come over our democracy, it is called consumptionism. The American citizens first importance to his country is now no longer that of citizen, but that of consumer.”

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The role of the individual and the ideology of big business was repressed for much of the period between the 1930s-1960s, due in part to business’ role in precipitating the Great Depression. However, big business and self-interest began to re-emerge in the 1970s. Why then? Several right wing policy think tanks, including the Heritage Foundation, the Cato Foundation, and the American Enterprise Institute, actively shifting the public discourse away from the necessity of government and towards the possibilities deregulated businesses could provide for personal wealth generation and short term economic growth. Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher rose to power in the 1980s, relying heavily on reports issued by these right-wing think tanks as well as the free-market ideologies developed by economists Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman. They ushered in an era of small government, deregulation, and privatization that allowed big businesses and multinational corporations (MNCs) to thrive, a philosophical movement referred to as “neoliberalism.” Communities driven by powerful communal philosophies such as the Omaha, the Iroquois, and traditional African communities are seen as threats to the neoliberal paradigm, and as such they are pressured to comply with the dominant ideology rather than express their own.

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So, is there any hope of restructuring society around a fundamental principle of human interconnectedness and oneness with the earth? Yes! It starts by choosing to actively oppose society by changing our personal behavior, beginning with adjusting what we buy, how much we buy, and what we talk about with those close to us. It involves taking part in social action and joining interest groups opposing the destruction of nature, the extinction of species, and the harm or exploitation of fellow human beings. It means making space for indigenous communities to speak truth and wisdom into our broken society. And it means being unafraid to confront the fact that we need to open ourselves up to each other, to collaborate and love each other and grieve over the self-inflicted harm being done to us by our society.

Conventional wisdom tells us that we are foolish if we believe that cooperation is fruitful, that we only make ourselves vulnerable to pain and loss. However, our guttural instinct tells us something different. It tells us that the world is interconnected, and that our perceived individuality is an illusion make popular by our culture. It tells us that the only way to truly harm ourselves and our planet is to refuse to cooperate, and instead simply go about pursuing our own self-interest. And if we really listen closely, it tells us that we cannot be truly human unless we work to heal our broken relationships with each other, wildlife, and our planet. We all have to choose whether or not to heed this voice. What will you choose?

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Thanks for visiting aarondanowski.com! Leave you comments below, and be sure to stay up to date on my travels by clicking on the “Following” button on the right hand side of your page!

If you would like to contact me directly, please do so via email: adanowski@zagmail.gonzaga.edu

For more on the history of PR and consumerism in the US and the UK, watch the BBC documentary series “The Century of the Self”, by Adam Curtis

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Posted on July 24, 2016 by adanowski95

Economics, Latest Posts, Social Change, Student Discernment

Feature

“Not again,” I think to myself, desperately trying to shake the thought out of my head before it takes hold. Too late. For the tenth time this week, I am thrown back in time and land with a thud, picking myself up in the dusty streets of Haiti or Cameroon. What happens next is a little different each time. Sometimes its pulling water up from the well behind the house in order to take a shower. Other times it’s just walking down the street and greeting people in French, admiring the vibrant colors in people’s clothing. Still other times it’s hopping into the flatbed of Rebuild Globally’s silver pickup truck and absorbing the sights, sounds and smells of Port-au-Prince as we pull out of the workshop and merge into mid-afternoon traffic.

“Not again…”

– – – – –

It’s been over two months since I finished up my world travel marathon to Haiti and Cameroon, and yet, if you stepped inside my head, you might think I just got home yesterday. For two months, I’ve sought to stay busy, throwing myself into re-establishing friendships, taking 24 credits of classes, applying for scholarships and researching internships… anything to keep my mind off the fact that I am back in the US, and no matter where I go, this will always be my world.

The thing is, nothing can prepare you for this. Returning home and reconciling yourself to the world you once inhabited is no cakewalk. You are different, and although you may be surrounded by encouraging family and friends, you have to undertake this journey by yourself. What’s more, its not something that will wear off without putting in significant effort. You can ignore it, for a time, but it always catches up to you, oftentimes in the most inopportune times and places. Sure, it helps to stay busy, but that merely delays the inevitable.

This past week I finally broke down. For the first time since coming back, I ran out of things to distract me, and I had to face the hard fact that I am living in a reality I can barely call my own anymore.

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The problem is, my experiences in Haiti and Cameroon feel completely disconnected from my life back here in the US. I feel disoriented, as if part of me never left while other parts of me feel like they never quite made it back. Trying to gather these disparate parts of myself is exhausting, and oftentimes it feels like an exercise in futility. My mind can’t wrap itself around the wholeness of my experiences in Haiti, Cameroon, and the US simultaneously… one always crowds out the others. And now that I am back in the US, my ability to preserve the intensity and omnipresence of those other parts is giving way. That scares me. I fear they will evaporate slowly, and one day they will vanish indefinitely into the darkness of forgotten memory, leaving me to act like nothing ever happened. Perhaps this is irrational, but I feel like I’m trying to hold sand in my hands, helplessly watching it slip through the cracks when I’m not paying attention.

I don’t want to re-assimilate back here in the US, because doing so threatens to minimize these experiences, and there are important lessons I learned in Haiti and Cameroon that have shaped the way I am. Not only that, but these lessons fly in the face of everything that I’ve learned here at home, and I hate being immersed in an environment that (by and large) doesn’t understand these parts of myself.

That is why when people ask me if its good to be back, I have a difficult time answering them. Spending time with family and friends, taking warm showers, and savoring the taste of clean tap water and the fresh chill of a cold winter day are all quite nice. But on the other hand, there are aspects of being back that I dread. I hate the unstated assumption that the “American Way” is the best way. I find it frustrating that we are told to be individualist and materialist by thousands of ads and marketing messages every day. I don’t like talking to people about surface level things like food, sports teams, and celebrities. And more often than not I tend to sit quietly and contemplate everything I no longer take for granted as people complain the internet is too slow or that traffic is bad.

But perhaps most of all, I get angry thinking about the human cost of maintaining our high-flying American culture. Business and government officials wheel-and-deal around the world in order to protect our interests abroad. We brazenly defend our military interventionist policies by spouting rhetoric about democracy and freedom. And we assume that whatever is good for America is, by extension, good for the world, because without America, the world would be in deep trouble. We need to stop kidding ourselves. We’re not “The greatest nation on earth”; we’re just “The biggest bully on the block”, and we mistake people’s desire to come to America as tacit approval of our modus-operandi, instead of what it really is: a self-interested desire to be on the winning side of a rigged geopolitical game.

Some people might say I’m being pretty harsh and ungrateful for the opportunities I’ve received. To them I say this: I am thankful for the opportunities I have been given, but I am ashamed of what it means to be an American, and I think we need to get to work fixing it. We claim that “might makes right”, and that it’s our right therefore to determine what is best for the world. We allow multinational companies to exploit, pillage, and plunder underdeveloped countries by politically strong-arming their leaders, and then we throw them pennies with development aid that indebts them and enriches American contractors. We ensuring our self-interest above all else, without realizing that this strategy isn’t in our best interest long term. In many discussions I had with people in Cameroon, America stood for individualism and excess, not freedom and democracy. I don’t think I’m wrong for thinking we need to change that.

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As I was thinking about this last night and stressing myself out, I picked up Confessions of An Economic Hitman by John Perkins and I flipped to one of my favorite passages in the book to ease my mind. It’s 1971, and John is speaking with a group of Indonesian college students in a coffeehouse in Bandung about how they perceive America, and what can be done to change it:

“The English major looked me directly in the eyes. ‘Stop being so greedy,’ she said, ‘and so selfish. Realize that there is more to the world than your big houses and fancy stores. People are starving and you worry about oil for your cars. Babies are dying of thirst and you search the fashion magazines for the latest styles. Nations like ours are drowning in poverty, but your people don’t even hear our cries for help. You shut your ears to the voices of those who try to tell you these things. You label them radicals or Communists. You must open your hearts to the poor and downtrodden, instead of driving them further into poverty and servitude. There’s not much time left. If you don’t change, you’re doomed.’” (52-53)

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The only thing that keeps me going is the thought that I can use my experiences to change the way people act, and that by extension we can change the world. We need to reorient ourselves away from material wealth and turn towards spiritual wealth. In essence, this means leading a life that demonstrates you hold certain virtues as priceless, such as love, justice, equality, freedom, sufficiency, etc.

At the end of the day, I don’t want to assimilate back into American culture. I want to take the lessons I learned abroad and integrate them into the culture around me, transforming it into a more holistic, life-promoting social construct. If America truly wants to be the greatest country on earth, we must strive to encourage all people to pursue spiritual wealth, moving beyond economic idolatry towards the notion that every person is priceless and worthy of love, justice, equality, and freedom, regardless of race, religion, nationality or creed.

Call me a radical, an outlier, a dreamer… that’s fine. But by living my life in this way, I plan to leave the world just a bit more caring, just, and equitable, and if you agree with me, I hope you’ll join me too.

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Thanks for visiting aarondanowski.com! Leave you comments below, and be sure to stay up to date on my travels by clicking on the “Following” button on the right hand side of your page!

If you would like to contact me directly, please do so via email: adanowski@zagmail.gonzaga.edu

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Posted on February 21, 2016 by adanowski95

Cameroon, Haiti, Latest Posts, Student Discernment

Feature

What is the goal of a college education?

This question has been struck in my mind ever since returning to Gonzaga this semester after studying abroad in the fall.

Over the course of the 2015-16 academic year, 1.8 million students will receive their bachelor’s degree from American colleges and universities. What will they be taking away from the experience, besides a diploma and $29,000 in student debt? On the flip side, millions of high school seniors will commit to attend university in the fall. What do they expect to achieve over the next 4 years of their lives?

Senior year of high school, posing with two years of college mail (Spring 2013)

Going to college shouldn’t be about joining fraternities, going to sports events, or partying with your friends on the weekends. It shouldn’t even be about preparing yourself to get a job. It should be about discovering how to live life to your fullest potential. To do that, you need to ask big questions, take chances, explore various areas of human knowledge, and commit to figure out who you want to be, not necessarily what you want to do. The average college grad today will have 12-15 different jobs over the course of their career, according to the Bureau for Labor Statistics. So rather than trying to identify your “dream job” or “dream career”, what if you were encouraged to used college as a time to clarify your values, learn about the world, and decide how you want to leave your mark on it? In essence, what if college were about finding one’s vocation and place in society rather than one’s job? Frederick Buechner defines this as “the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” By committing to find that place, you can make college incredibly meaningful, no matter where you go to school, what you study, or what your grades are.

“you need to ask big questions, take chances, explore various areas of human knowledge, and commit to figure out who you want to be, not necessarily what you want to do.”

Unfortunately, college is not set up to encourage students to do this, and society does a terrible job of promoting vocation-seeking and self-reflection through higher education. Right now, most colleges market themselves as a surefire way to get a job with an established, reputable company. Some schools, like Gonzaga, stress their commitment to a “liberal arts education”, graduating informed, socially conscious students. However, this rhetoric is often not reflected in the classroom. Core classes freshman year emphasize writing, communication, and critical thinking, but they do not provide appropriate space to apply these skills to personal reflection. Unless a student develops a strong personal motivation to engage in self-reflection and look for their vocation, they are not likely to invest the time and effort required. No wonder so many people decide to screw it and just ignore the big questions until they’re faced with their impending graduation senior year!

Overall, higher education is suffering from an existential crisis: as the importance and cost of a college education increases, the social pressure to pursue a lucrative major and get a high paying job after graduation becomes ever more acute. In the face of a “hopeless” situation, where pursuing one’s passion is out of the question, students resort to greater and greater means of escapism in order to cope. What we need is a fundamental shift in higher education that gives students the imperative and the space to pursue their vocations through self-understanding. This is the real way to make college worth the investment.

E.F. Schumacher argues that education without self-reflection is useless:

“Whether the subjects taught are subjects of science or the humanities, if the teaching does not lead to a clarification of metaphysics, that is to say, our fundamental convictions, it cannot educate a man and, consequently, cannot be of real value to society.” (98, Small is Beautiful)

Furthermore, he argues that

“The truly educated man is not a man who knows a bit of everything, not even the man who knows all the details of all subjects (if such a thing were possible)… but he will be truly in touch with [his] centre. He will not be in doubt about his basic convictions, about his view on the meaning and purpose of his life. He may not be able to explain these matters in words, but the conduct of his life will show a certain sureness of touch which stems from his inner clarity.” (100, Small is Beautiful)

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I gave a talk to 300 graduating seniors at Jesuit High School last May on “The True Value of College”, and in it I shared this notion tmy belief that the best way to make the most of college was to pursue one’s vocation. The 25 minute talk is now up on YouTube, and whether you’re a current student, educator, parent, mentor, or just someone wondering if pursuing your passion is even possible in this day and age, this talk is for you. I shared five key lessons that have helped me on my journey to make a living and change the world, and they go as follows:

Seek to understand yourself. Write down what you know.
Take the leap of faith: Commit to finding your passion
Talk to university employees and network with the community.
Use college as an opportunity to find your vocation, not just your job.
Recognize college is a privilege, not a right or an entitlement.

I will leave you with one final quote from E.F. Schumacher:

“The problems of education are merely reflections of the deepest problems of our age. They cannot be solved by organization, administration, or the expenditure of money, even though the importance of all these is not denied. We are suffering from a metaphysical disease, and the cure must therefore be metaphysical. Education which fails to clarify our central convictions is mere training or indulgence.” (107, Small is Beautiful )

Me with my brothers, Luke (left) and Paul (right) before returning to Gonzaga in January

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In my last blog I decided I wanted to share my 10 favorite TED talks of all time. After watching about four hours of TED talks on a dozen issues last Saturday, I realized that one post wouldn’t be enough. So, my plan is to share one or two talks as I write on various themes over the coming months.

Thanks for visiting aarondanowski.com! Leave you comments below, and be sure to stay up to date on my travels by clicking on the “Following” button on the right hand side of your page!

If you would like to contact me directly, please do so via email: adanowski@zagmail.gonzaga.edu

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Posted on February 4, 2016 by adanowski95

Latest Posts, Social Change, Student Discernment

Feature

Ever since I arrived back in Portland on December 14^th, I’ve been busy reflecting on the only question that has keep me sane in the aftermath of my trip to Cameroon: What now?

Many people have told me to take it easy, or to wait until I get back to school to start contemplating the question of what’s next, or simply to enjoy the present and let that be enough. For better or for worse, I find that to be impossible. The jarring, and indeed disorienting, disparity between the reality in Cameroon and the reality I am now confronted with back home is too great to ignore; The only way to put my mind at ease is to identify how I plan on bringing these two realities together in my life. I need to begin the long, arduous process of understanding what going to Cameroon meant for me.

Yaounde, Cameroon

Portland, Oregon

When I decided to go to Cameroon, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. I only knew that it was something I had to do. “Had” with a capital H. There was no doubt in my mind that this was an experience that would fundamentally alter the way I perceive the world. It was a hard thing to explain to my parents at first, but as my Mom told me later on “I could either let you go or tell you no and have you hate me for it.” There was something compelling me to go, and only an act of God would keep me from following through with it.

I didn’t have a plan for how it would fit in my life long term. I just knew I had questions that couldn’t be answered by sitting in a classroom in Spokane: How does the world really work? What environments do I thrive in? What issues should I dedicate myself to champion? And what kind of lifestyle will I need to adopt in order to do so?

In many ways, taking the semester to study international development and culture it was a similar leap of faith as abandoning my plan to study engineering the summer before starting college. But both times, I felt that there was more out there waiting for me to learn, to experience, to discover, and if I didn’t seize the moment, I would regret it. I didn’t know where going to Cameroon was leading me, but I was emboldened by the words of Steve Jobs in his 2006 Stanford Commencement Speech (which I’ve written about before):

“…you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future… you have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever, because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path… and that will make all the difference.”

Looking out over Yaounde from the Palais de Congress (September 2015)

– – – – –

I experienced just about every emotion on the spectrum in Cameroon: joy, exhilaration, fear, sadness, doubt, epiphany, love, and heartbreak for the state of the world. Looking back, amidst all the things I experienced, three important lessons stand out that are crucial for answering the “What now?” question:

1. Life is made rich by the people you live with and the values you live for.

2. The political and economic power structures that dominate the world today must be reformed in order to prioritize environmental sustainability and social justice, values that will benefit the majority of humanity.

3. Ideas have the power to challenge and overthrow entrenched systems, but only when they compel people with a vision of a better future and a sense of urgency to start moving towards it.

Diving into the intricacies of these three lessons would take more space than I have here, but suffice it to say that spending four months in Cameroon with such incredible, passionate peers and examining the shortcomings of international development over the past 80 years, as well as conducting independent research on the state of social entrepreneurship in the country resulted in one of the most fulfilling experiences of my life. Now comes the tricky part: applying these lessons moving forward.

Gonzaga at sunset (March 2015)

My current plan is to use this semester back at Gonzaga as a time of reflection and preparation for the next chapter in my quest to make a living and change the world. Specifically, I plan on investing time in exploring summer internships with think tanks and research programs focused on advancing economic, environmental, and social justice agendas. I’ll also begin to shift my focus towards preparing for graduate programs in international studies that examine the economic and political power structures that shape the world today. Lastly, I want to explore how I can share my experiences with audiences across the United States interested in learning about how they can serve as agents of change to usher in a new age of social justice based on solidarity, social innovation, and empathy.

Thankfully, I am not alone in this quest. There are thousands of people who have dedicated their lives to similar goals, learning from individuals and grassroots organizations all over the world and sharing their stories with the public. In fact, in an upcoming post I’ll be sharing my 10 favorite TED talks by people doing just that! By listening to the stories of these men and women, we can build empathy and find inspiration to solve the greatest challenges of our day and age: climate change, inequality, discrimination (of all types), hunger, and the demise of popular democracy in the face of corporate power and greed.

Together, we can, we must, and we will change the world. All it takes is an ounce of faith and the will to persevere.

– – – – –

Since I officially launched this website on December 28, 2014, over the past year it has received 3,733 views from hundreds of visitors in 63 countries… To each and every person who took the time to accompany me on my travels, thank you so much for your company. I never imagined I would be able to reach so many people with my stories and perspective. I hope you have found some food for thought in my words and photos, and if so, I would love to read your comments about your favorite posts, things you took away over the past year, or things you would like me to talk about in the near future! Here’s to another great year!

– – – – –

Thanks for visiting aarondanowski.com! Leave you comments below, and be sure to stay up to date on my travels by clicking on the “Following” button on the right hand side of your page!

If you would like to contact me directly, please do so via email: adanowski@zagmail.gonzaga.edu

2 Comments

Posted on January 5, 2016 by adanowski95

Cameroon, Latest Posts, Student Discernment

When I was in seventh grade, I remember being selected by several of my teachers to attend a conference at Portland State University on Africa: Past, Present, and Future. I remember running out of the principal’s office towards the outdoor common area, pumping my fists and thinking to myself “This is awesome!! I get to miss class on Friday for this!”

Several days later, sitting at a wooden desk in a dimly lit classroom at PSU, listening to men and women my parents’ age network and exchange business cards, I kept to myself, preferring to make sure my pencil was still sharp and flip through my notebook. I momentarily glanced up at the backlit woman standing at the podium in front of the classroom, and observed her as she greeted attendees. She was short, no more than five foot two, in her mid-forties, with straight blond hair. She looked up, smiled, and waving at a colleague across the room before turning back to her computer and furrowing her brow as she and made last minute adjustments to her notes. The small talk suddenly died down, the doors at the back of the classroom swung shut, and the woman launched into her presentation:

“Good morning everyone, thank you for being here today! I want to kick off our hour together by asking you a quick question:

What is Lesotho?

Is Lesotho a type of food prepared by the Massai tribe in Kenya, consisting of braised beef, rice, and steamed vegetables? Is Lesotho it a small, densely populated country which is completely surrounded by South Africa? Or is Lesotho a communal dance practiced in rural Namibia during an annual male initiation ceremony?”

After pondering the question for a couple seconds, I decided to go with the food option, which got my young adolescent mind wondering what would be served for lunch that afternoon. Probably some traditional African food from Ethiopia or someplace, catered by a local restaurant… Suddenly, I was snapped back to attention by a shout from the front of the room:

“Lesotho is in fact a country! How many of you guessed correctly?”

I don’t recall how many people raised their hands, or honestly anything else from the rest of that day. The only thing I remember is the thought that hit me at that moment, an idea that burned into my conscience at thirteen years of age in that classroom:

“Lesotho is an African country… and I never knew about it until today. What else is out there just waiting for me to learn about it?”

Meeting with the Bagyeli tribe to discuss the effects of modernization on their traditional way of life

– – – – –

I haven’t thought about that moment or that conference in years, but it occurred to me the other day as I was journaling at my homestay on the coast of Cameroon that, in many ways, the idea that took root in that moment was one of the major reasons I felt the need to come to Cameroon. I’ve become addicted to learning, to uncovering the unknown, and to expanding my image of reality by experiencing the world from different perspectives. One of the things that attracted me to SIT for study abroad was the fact that all their programs are centered around the experiential learning cycle (see the diagram on the right), so at every step of the program we’re constantly encouraged to reflect and analyze our experiences, identify key insights, and then apply them to future experiences. As a result, many of our classes turn into field trips: One day our French class will consist of going to the beach and striking up a conversation with local fishermen on their daily routines. The next day, our Social Pluralism and Minorities class will spend the day visiting groups of autochthonous Cameroonians struggling to adapt their traditional forest-dwelling way of life to a new age of modernity. After that, we’ll meet with a local NGO leader to debrief the experience and discuss key takeaways from the visit, before going to visit a local development organization striving to address women’s issues in a comprehensive manner, targeting education for at-risk children, HIV and AIDS prevention sessions for prostitutes, and professional training for women to dye cotton garments and earn an income.

Our french teacher, Thomas, talking to Haley as we head down to the beach to talk with local fishermen for class

In addition to the experiential learning we use in the classroom, we use the same process to experience, analyze, and learn from everyday life in Cameroon. Thus far, I’ve spent two weeks living with an upper class host family in the capital city of Yaounde and two weeks with a lower-middle class host family in the coastal town of Kribi, and they have been incredible teachers in their own right! I speak only in French with my host families, I’ve learned to wash my clothes by hand, and in Kribi I learned to live without running water by using a well behind the house, taking bucket showers and using a squat toilet. Even for upper class Cameroonians, washing machines are extravagant luxuries as opposed to basic necessities. I’ve learned what it means to live life around personal relationships as opposed to time, stopping to have in-depth conversations with strangers about their hopes and dreams for Cameroon and Africa in general on my way to run errands at the supermarket. I’ve learned firsthand how Cameroonians strike a delicate balance between ethnic diversity and national unity in a country with over 240 ethnic groups and 280 different languages. I’ve dug into Cameroonian history with local experts and learned how to understand popular sentiments towards France, China, the US, and neighboring countries such as Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea. And I’ve had long discussions with my American peers about how we can take this experience back home and educate people on the realities of development aid and westernization here in Cameroon. All of these experiences have expanded my concept of reality, challenged what I believe about the world, and advanced my understanding of what my personal role in the world is, and what role everyone in the US and around the world has to play in creating a more fair, just world through political and economic reform.

My host family in Kribi (Mama Julie and her brother Salomon)

Starting with my personal role, I’ve realized that, although I will not be able to “fix” neo-colonialism on my own or single-handedly replace the current paradigm of big business with social entrepreneurship and social innovation, I CAN use my career to work with other passionate, dedicated individuals on behalf of the millions of people excluded from our modern political and economic systems. Jesuit education often cites the importance of pairing charity with justice to achieve social change, and in my mind, justice can only be served by working towards more inclusive, flexible social structures that grant everyone the chance to live a healthy, fulfilling life. Not pursuing justice for the millions of African youth currently unemployed, underemployed, or idle as a result of neo-colonialism, the hundreds of thousands of innocent refugees escaping violent conflict in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America, or the chronically homeless men, women, and children back in Portland, Oregon would be fatal to my sense of integrity, because they are not solely responsible for their state of affairs. The social structures that surround them never gave them a fair shot to succeed. I can’t change it all on my own… but I need to do my part, and that’s why I need to find a career that works to create social change, rather than one that feeds into the status quo. And I know I’m not the only one that feels this way. I’ve talked to hundreds of students and young professionals from all over the US who want to use their careers to solve social problems and create more inclusive social structures, and ultimately they are the reason I feel confident enough to maintain this blog. Nine such students are here with me on this trip, dozens are back with me at Gonzaga University, and hundreds from all over the world stood in unity with me at the AshokaU Exchange in Washington DC and the Net Impact Conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota this past year. I firmly believe that it only takes a few passionate people working together to prime the gears of change, and I want to use my voice to encourage like-minded people to join me in making a living and changing the world. For resources on how to make this possible, check out the Resources page of my website or email me directly for individualized advice on how to turn your passion for social change into a career!

Asking questions with my peers at the Bagyeli site visit

For anyone reading this who is already established in a career or is retired, we need your help too! I know that working for a big company is often most people’s only option to put food on the table and provide for their families, and even if someone believes the system they are a part of is taking advantage of them or other people, chances are they won’t feel like they are in a position to change it, especially if it means potentially putting their job at risk. If this is you, I have a different challenge for you: Are you willing to acknowledge that you still have a critical part to play in the process of systemic reform? If not, this might not be the right blog for you… but if so, congratulations! You are part of a community of millions of hard working Americans willing to throw their support behind substantial efforts to fight the unfair, unjust status quo (e.g. income inequality, the lobbying power of big business, and the role of big money in politics), and I want to encourage you in your efforts too. Change is possible, but only if we all work together and BELIEVE it’s possible. If a few passionate people dedicating their careers to creating more fair and just social systems (like my colleagues I described above) can prime the gears of change, support from people like you is the fuel we need to get these gears turning!

Your role is straight-forward, but by no means easy: To eradicate the biggest threat to justice and equality of our day and age… the deceptively subtle feeling of apathy. Apathy is the insidious feeling that convinces people that it takes too much effort to try and go against the status quo, and that the best thing to do is just kick back and enjoy the ebb and flow of popular opinion. How do we fight apathy? By using three readily accessible weapons:

Information: The first weapon is to stay informed on current events by accessing the information at your fingertips! Watch the PBS NewsHour on TV or online, read BBC News (their smartphone app is excellent), read non-fiction books on current issues, and cross-reference different sources of media to understand the root causes of these events.
Community: Get together with other people in your social circle (a group of friends, neighbors, family members, religious community members, co-workers) and schedule regular times to meet as a “Social Awareness Group” to discuss the current political, economic and social events you’ve been reading about. Commit at the outset to create a safe space where all ideas and perspectives are respected, and where the goal is to create a dialogue about what is happening and what is being done to address it, not just a time to lament how terrible the world is becoming.
New Experiences: Go together with members of your “Social Awareness Group” and seek to interact with change agents in your community and see the world from different perspectives. Volunteer with a local nonprofit and speak to beneficiaries, attend guest lectures at local colleges and universities, watch performances and documentaries with political messages, and debrief each experience in your “Social Awareness Group”, making sure to discuss potential action items in addition to lessons learned.

With these three weapons, you can eradicate apathy in your own life and inspire others to do the same. By engaging with critical social topics in this way, you will come across passionate people pursuing systemic change fulltime, and you can play your part by supporting them with your time, expertise, money, or simply by spreading the word about their work! Whether you’re 8 or 81, rich or poor, a single mom or an empty nester, you can employ these three weapons in your own life and become a positive change agent in your community. All it takes is acknowledging the need for systemic change, exposing yourself to social issues and passionate change agents, and believing in the value of your support.

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Thanks for visiting aarondanowski.com! Be sure to stay up to date on my travels by clicking on the “Following” button on the right hand side of your page!

Leave you comments below, and if you would like to contact me directly, please do so via email: adanowski@zagmail.gonzaga.edu

2 Comments

Posted on October 2, 2015 by adanowski95

Cameroon, Economics, Latest Posts, Social Change, Student Discernment

On a sunny California day in May, 2005, over twenty thousand people packed into Stanford University’s football stadium to listen to one of the brightest stars in Silicon Valley deliver his first (and only) commencement speech. Unbeknownst to them, by the time Steve Jobs and his family piled into their SUV in Palo Alto, they were running late. With his wife Laurene at the wheel and their three kids, Erin, Eve, and Reed in the back seat, Steve quickly went through his speech one more time, making final adjustments to his script as he went. He was tense, worried they weren’t going to make it in time.

When his family finally reached the stadium parking lot, a policewoman at the entrance was redirecting cars and telling them they needed to park in the overflow lot several blocks away. “You don’t understand,” Laurene explained, reading the doubt on the officer’s face. “I have the commencement speaker here. He’s right here in the car. Really!” Steve (dressed in an old black T-shirt, a pair of worn out jeans and a pair of Birkenstocks) didn’t quite strike the image of a commencement speaker, but the officer laughed when she realized who it was and allowed the family to proceed. They arrived just in time for Steve to put on his robe, gather himself, and take the stage.

Steve Jobs preparing for his 2005 Stanford commencement speech

Many observers consider the commencement speech Steve Jobs gave that afternoon to be one of the best speeches of the 21^st century, and to date over 30 million people have watched it online. I first heard his talk in 2012, as I was wrapping up my senior year of high school and facing the daunting task of figuring out what I wanted to do with my life. Jobs’ stage presence, story telling ability and insightful commentary on the nature of life, death and meaning struck me, and I’ve routinely returned to his talk whenever I face uncertainty about my path in life. As I wrap up my 10 week stint here in Haiti and prepare for my next adventure in Cameroon, I decided to listen to Jobs’ speech once again, hoping his words would help orient me as I continue to pursue my calling.

As I listened to it this time, though, I took note of the three key lessons Steve Jobs drives home that have served as guideposts on my journey. I think they are vital lessons for anyone in pursuit of their calling in life, and they are as follows:

Steve Jobs’ 3 Lessons for Pursuing Your Calling

1. When you feel lost, trust that the dots will connect looking backwards

2. When searching for what you love, be persistent… don’t settle!

3. When making the big decisions in life, remember that one day you are going to die

Lesson #1: When You Feel Lost, Trust That The Dots Will Connect Looking Backwards

As Jobs walks up to the podium and launches into his speech, his opening statements revolve around the idea that life only makes sense in retrospect. He gives an example from his own life, citing a calligraphy class he decided to drop in on after deciding to officially drop out of Reed College:

“If I had never dropped out, I would never have dropped in on that calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course, it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college, but it was very clear looking backwards ten years later. Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards. You have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future… you have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever, because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart, even when it leads you off the well worn path… and that will make all the difference.”

Jobs’ first lesson for pursuing your calling is trusting that the experiences in your life will connect. Once you do that, you are free to confidently live out the calling you feel on your heart, wherever it may lead you. I can attest to that: following your calling will take you places you never dreamed of. In the span of a year and a half, following my calling has taken me to India, Haiti and soon to Cameroon. I trust that I’m on the right path because I believe God is the one issuing my calling, and I know that as long as I heed that calling, it will lead me to the right opportunities and experiences that will shape the course of my life. That being said, I still struggle with questions and doubts about where I’m going.

On May 30th, two days before boarding my flight to Port-au-Prince, I penned myself a note in my travel journal that read “I don’t want to live a divided life, one where I constantly feel the pull of both my purpose and my home… I want them integrated. To do that I need to understand where to put down my roots: at home [in the developed world] or abroad [in the developing world].” Ever since returning from my trip to Chennai, India with the Opus Prize, as I’ve looked ahead towards my future after graduating, I’ve been split between two courses of action. In scenario one, I can see myself as an expat, working and living “in the field”, building relationships and raising a family. In scenario two I’m a consultant, a strategist working “behind the scenes” based in the US, Europe, or some other developed nation as my team and I support social entrepreneurial work around the world.

“Believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart” – Steve Jobs

Working in Haiti is summer has been my opportunity to explore scenario one and find out what expat life looks like, but it hasn’t helped me definitively chose one path over the other. Sometimes I wish I knew, wish that I could connect the dots looking forward, but then I realize that its the choice which makes life worth living. I long for confidence that I’m on the right path, when in reality the path is being created day by day, choice by choice. The only thing you can be sure of is that you’re making the best path you can make, striving to include your goals, dreams, values and talents as you surmount the challenges that arise as you go along.

I look forward to the day when I will look back and see how the twists and turns of the path I’ve made helped me achieve my calling, but for the time being I’ll enjoy the ride. With 10 weeks of living as an expat under my belt, I feel better equipped to make an informed decision when it comes time to choose my path.

Filling out paperwork for study abroad in Cameroon

Lesson #2: When Searching For What You Love, Be Persistent… Don’t Settle!

After taking a quick swig of water to clear his throat and fight back the heat, Jobs launches into the second part of his speech, describing the importance of finding and doing work that you love:

“I was lucky. I found what I loved to do early in life… You’ve got to find what you love, and that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking… Don’t settle.”

I believe everyone has a calling, a purpose that they have been equipped to fulfill through their lives, and its important to align your career with that calling. Whether you pursue a career in the sciences, business, engineering, social work, teaching, writing, acting, music, or another field, your career helps you fulfill your calling when you use your talents and abilities to serve and empower others. As an example, I know that I want to use my business knowledge to advance the fields of social entrepreneurship and social business, creating a world where organizations profit as a result of helping people maximize their potential, rather than as a result of taking advantage of people. I want to be a part of the movement that helps businesses become agents for social change.

Many people find that to be an unconventional goal as a business major, but its because I see a future in which people don’t start businesses to make huge amounts of money, but rather to make the world a better place. I agree with Pope Francis’ assessment in the Evangelii gaudium, where he writes that “Business is a vocation, a noble vocation, provided that those engaged in it see themselves challenged by a greater meaning in life; this will enable them truly to serve the common good by striving to increase the goods of this world and make them more accessible to all.” (203.) Francis, an outspoken critic of “unfettered capitalism”, understands the need for change. The way businesses currently operate, with all the focus on quarterly earnings and stock prices, doesn’t take into account the tremendous harm being done to the environment and the workforce in the name of maximizing shareholder satisfaction. And Francis also sees that the way to change the system is to push the participants to unlock the deeper meaning of their work. Business can be a tremendous force for good, providing people with dignified jobs, livable wages, protecting the environment, and satiating people’s higher needs for self-actualization and fulfillment… but only if we choose to make it so. That is a mission I want to spend my life advancing.

Business can be a tremendous force for good… but only if we choose to make it so

The key to doing great work is to ensure your job allows you to pursue your calling. Many people separate the two, assuming that you need to work to pay rent and to allow you to volunteer and pursue making a difference in your spare time. You cannot settle for this scenario. To do great work, you must believe you are making the world a better place because of your work. Remember, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle.”

Lesson #3: When Making the Big Decisions in Life, Remember That One Day You Are Going to Die

As Steve Jobs pauses for a second and surveys the crowd, he launches into the third and most compelling part of his speech: the value of death and dying. Every morning for the past 33 years, he says, he looks himself in the mirror and asks “If today were my last, would I want to do what I am about to do today?”. If his answer is no too many times, he knows something has to change. He goes on to say that “Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment and failure… these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart.”

Half-finished coffins in Port-au-Prince

Take a moment and think of a time you decided not to do something because you were afraid of failing. Really think about it. Got something in mind? Now read that quote again:

“Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to make the big choices in life. Because almost everything, all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment and failure… these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked, there is no reason not to follow your heart.”

This is perhaps the biggest lesson for pursuing your calling from Jobs’ speech. Lots of people choose to mortgage their calling en lieu of stability, comfort, and security. Other people are so afraid of rejection or failure that they never bother even trying to pursue their calling. Still other people feel like it would require too much unconformity or too much effort to orient their lives and their careers around their calling. All three excuses (stability, fear of failure and too much effort) go out the window when you think about death. When you are on your deathbed, surrounded by your children and your grandchildren, will you be thankful for the stability, grateful for having avoided failure, or happy in the fact that you didn’t push yourself too hard? Or will you be at peace, knowing in your heart that you did everything humanly possible to make a difference and live up to the calling you felt on your life?

“Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose” – Steve Jobs

No matter where you are in life, it’s never too late to choose to pursue your calling. The world needs passionate men and women, grandparents and grandchildren, sons and daughters who are not afraid to trust that the dots will connect, who pursue doing great work, and who live each day as if it were their last. You never know, you may be surprised by the greatness within you.

– – – – –

Steve Jobs’ 3 Lessons for Pursuing Your Calling

1. Trust that the dots will connect when you look back on your life

2. Be persistent searching for what you love… don’t settle!

3. Remember you are going to die when making the big decisions in life

– – – – –

This is my last post from here in Port-au-Prince. The next time you read an update from me, I will most likely be settling in to my semester abroad in the West African nation of Cameroon. I want to leave you with one final thought, a quote from a former Opus Prize winner named Lyn Lusi about pursuing your calling:

Lyn Lusi, Co-Founder of HEAL Africa

“Ask yourself, where in the world is it that God wants me to be working? In every one of us called to be His follower, God will put into our hearts a passion for justice — to fight for justice for a segment of His people through the high calling that we receive. It will not be the same call for everyone, and it might be completely different for you and for me. But God has a vision for our lives — that’s His job — and he sees a lion inside of us that He wants to set free. I urge you to set your lion free, and follow God’s high calling for your life.”

– Lyn Lusi, 2011 Opus Prize Grand Winner

Trust that the dots will connect, don’t be afraid to forge your own path, and don’t settle for anything less than living out your calling.

– Aaron D

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Thanks for visiting aarondanowski.com! Leave you comments below, and be sure to stay up to date on my travels by clicking on the “Following” button on the right hand side of your page!

If you would like to contact me directly, please do so via email: adanowski@zagmail.gonzaga.edu

6 Comments

Posted on August 6, 2015 by adanowski95

Haiti, Latest Posts, Student Discernment

Feature

It’s been a particularly busy couple of weeks down here at Rebuild Globally: Our new director of sales visited the workshop for the first time, we hosted an operations expert for a week who helped us analyze the workshop for ways to improve efficiency, and Rebuild’s board of directors flew in for several days to meet the artisans and explore Port-au-Prince. All of these things have kept me pretty busy and unable to think about my next post until earlier this week, but now that things are slowing down I’ve had a chance to rest and reflect on what I want to write about.

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When I found out I’d be spending the summer in Haiti, I knew that this was my chance to answer a question that had been burning deep inside me for over a year: What was life like as a foreigner working and living in a developing country? I felt very blessed to have the opportunity to personally explore that question after only my second year of college, and I intended to capitalize on it. My desire to work abroad after graduation was fanned into flame by my trip to India last summer for the Opus Prize, however I had no concept of what kinds of challenges and difficulties were associated with that kind of life. I felt like I was missing a vital piece of information for determining my future, and going to Haiti would provide me with a chance to better understand what I wanted to do post-graduation. Now, after almost two months of working, eating, sleeping, and soaking up life here, I’m starting to fill in the blanks.

To understand what it’s like to live as a foreigner in a developing context, you have to examine what it’s like to be an expatriate (“someone who lives outside of their native country”). From my experience working and speaking with many expats in Port-au-Prince, there are four things that characterize their lives away from their homeland.

The 4 Characteristics of Life as an Expat:

1. Life as an expat is isolating

“Want to meet up at Starbucks at 3?”, said no one ever in Haiti. There isn’t a Starbucks in the entire country, nor is there a sports bar around the corner to kick back with buddies on a Friday night. You can’t go to a movie theater to decompress after a long week, or even go to the beach or hang out in the mountains without blocking out an entire day to travel there and back. This is one of the most consistent complaints I’ve heard from my fellow expats, and its one of the most prevalent aspects of life working in a country like Haiti.

A typical afternoon after work: listening to music and decompressing at home.

As a result of the lack of communal spaces for expats to hang out, many times people will simply commute between home and work, home and work before spending a Saturday with friends at a local bar or driving up into the mountains. Having access to internet helps fill your spare time each afternoon, but spending too much time on your computer can dig you deeper into a hole of isolation. As you make it through the week and Thursday and Friday role around, a combination of exhaustion and mild frustration mounts from the daily challenges of working in Haiti, and something as simple as a radiator overheating on your way home from work or not having running water at your apartment one day can become a major stressor when you don’t have much to help relieve the workweek tension.

Radiator spewing coolant on the way back home from work

2. The friendships you make with other expats galvanize quickly

Several weeks after I got here, I was at Pizza Amour with Annie and Sarah (the two expats currently working at Rebuild Globally) when I met a group of expats who worked a few blocks away from Rebuild at a woodworking company called Maxima. Among them was a guy named Kobus, a well built Dutchman who spoke with an accent and had a great sense of humor. Kobus had worked for Maxima for over a year and a half, and I quickly found out that he was known as one of the nicest, most hard working guys around. Sitting next to Kobus was another expat named Kadisha, a recent arrival originally from the Congo but who had studied Architecture and Urban Design in Australia. When we first met, he told me that Portland, Oregon was the city he and his classmates had studied at length in their introductory urban design class, and he said he had spent hours pouring over maps of the place! After dinner was over, we said our goodbyes and I didn’t expect to meet either Kobus or Kadisha again.

My good friends Kadisha (center) and Kobus (right)

Luckily the expat community is tight knit here in Port-au-Prince, so several weeks later we met up at Rebuild’s Boutique Grand Opening (where the photo above was taken) and soon afterwards I found myself hiking through the mountains far above Port-au-Prince with Kadisha (an experience I detailed in my last blog post). Another one of my good expat friends, Nick, a singer/songwriter from Colorado, invited me to a cookout a few families were having across town last weekend. Nick is spending three months in Haiti working for Heartline Ministries as a driver, and our time in Haiti has overlapped for about a month now. We drove over to Heartline’s main campus with several other expats, gathered firewood, and roasted hotdogs and marshmallows before talking late into the night.

Roasting hotdogs at Heartline

From left to right: Rob, Nick, Glenda, Sarah, and Becky enjoying dinner at Heartline

All the expats here know the challenges of working and living in Haiti, so they go out of their way to support one another and be inclusive when they have get togethers and events going on. I’ve been invited over for dinners and offered rides to church by the founders of Heartline, a husband and wife duo named John and Beth Mchoul who have lived in Haiti for 26 years ( they’re quick to tell you they’re originally from “Bahston”!). Through their generosity I’ve been given the chance to meet dozens of people and to be included in the tight knit expat community here in Port-au-Prince.

Beth Mchoul receiving help from several young girls carrying food

3. Expats aren’t tourists, but they aren’t locals either

Visiting monuments, traveling around the country, and hanging out in the mountains or at the beach are all things expats do, just not all the time. That said, even though they live and work in country, that doesn’t mean they are fully integrated as locals. They live in a sort of limbo, suspended between their home country and their country of residence. The depth of the experience I’ve had here in Port-au-Prince as an expat (making friends, helping Rebuild to change and grow, and learning the local language) is contrasted with the breadth of experience many tourists get when they visit a foreign country for a short time. Tourists see a snapshot of the country, whereas expats get a higher resolution picture of a smaller area

One of my favorite parts of being an expat in Port-au-Prince is being able to get my bearings. The past several weeks I’ve walked to some of my meetings by foot, navigating through the busy streets of Port-au-Prince. That’s something I’m only comfortable doing because I am confident I know where I’m going and I can speak enough Kreole to ask for directions if I get lost. I’m usually the only white person walking, which can be uncomfortable at times but people are almost always friendly and smile when you ask them how they are doing in their mother tongue. There’s something to be said for experiencing life as its being lived by the people around you, and meeting people briefly on my walks has been a great way of doing that.

4. Every expat has several outlets

Sometimes all you need is a bit of time away from the stress and chaos of life in Haiti, and having outlets to help you cope is critical. For some people its kicking back a few beers every night, for others its doing yoga, for still others its listening to music, reading fiction novels or making art. Since I arrived seven weeks ago, my outlets have been photography and watching comedy clips on YouTube.

Watching shows like “Last Week Tonight with John Oliver” gives me a taste of what’s going on in the world, but it does so in such a way that I can laugh or shake my head at the absurdity of the world and forget momentarily about the stressors here in Haiti. Photography, on the other hand, has given me a chance to embrace the nature of reality here in Port-au-Prince and to try and capture its essence. I carry my camera with me just about everywhere I go, and so far I’ve taken over 3,000 photos. I try to challenge myself by experimenting with new methods of composition and trying to capture the contrast I see day in and day out in this city. Here are a few examples of the photos I’ve taken:

– – – – –

The 4 Characteristics of Life as an Expat:

1. Life as an expat is isolating

2. The friendships you make with other expats galvanize quickly

3. Expats aren’t tourists, but they aren’t locals either

4. Every expat has several outlets

– – – – –

These four characteristics of life as an expat are things I never would have been able to learn back in Spokane or in Portland. Sometimes I think back to my first week here and try to remember how overwhelmed I felt by everything here. I was hit with so many changes all at once that I was numb, in a partial state of shock. I remember climbing underneath my mosquito net into bed the first night and thinking to myself “What the heck have I done?!? I don’t know why I thought this was a good idea!” With time, however, my reason for being hear grew more and more apparent. It has only really been during the past several weeks that I’ve had enough security and stability to begin trying to address the questions I came to Haiti seeking to answer: What is it like as a foreigner working and living in a developing context? Do I want to work abroad long term after graduation? What circumstances am I able to put up with in order to live the kind of life I want? I still don’t have all the answers, but I’m excited to continue chipping away at the questions, stripping away the layers of uncertainty to uncover the life I want to lead.

– Aaron D.

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Posted on July 21, 2015 by adanowski95

Haiti, Latest Posts, Student Discernment

Feature

The Open House for the new boutique on Friday

This was a tough week for me, both physically and mentally. On Wednesday I started coming down with a cold that sapped my energy and make my head feel ready to explode. At the same time, things at Rebuild got busier all week and everyone worked extra hours preparing for an open house event we hosted on Friday. The collision of these two things had me pondering some pretty big questions: 1. “What am I doing?” and 2. “Why am I even here?”

I knew the logical answers to these questions, I had practically memorized them: “I’m working with a social enterprise in Haiti that makes sandals out of tires and sells them to Kenneth Cole!”, and “I’m here because I wanted to experience what working with a social enterprise in a developing context feels like”. However, knowing these answers didn’t make the questions go away. In fact, every time they popped back up again it was more and more difficult to answer them. I knew WHY I was here, I was just less and less sure whether it was a good enough answer.

Kenneth Cole Rebuild Sandals

If there’s one thing I’ve learned from being here in Haiti, its that no matter how inspirational or awesome your target is, you will inevitably have moments when you’re ready to quit or stop pursuing it (see my post last week about the Inspiration Curve for more on this). The challenges you face will seem too steep, and your energy reserves will run completely dry. These are the pivotal moments on the Inspiration Curve that define your life. They force you to reconcile your beliefs with your actions, your values with your lifestyle, and your goals with your level of commitment. When those moments come, you have a difficult choice to make: Should I quit and move on to a new pursuit, or should I persevere and continue to fight for my target?

There is a right time to quit and a right time to persevere. The trick is figuring out which one is right for your current situation. There is a stigma our society associates with “quitting”, as if giving up is always a failure on the part of the individual. However, knowing when to quit is incredibly valuable, because my definition it also helps you recognize when to persevere.

“Should I quit and move on to a new pursuit, or should I persevere and continue to fight for my target?”

There are three guiding principles I’ve come across that help answer the question of whether to persevere or quit. I’ve learned these principles from people who have found their “right” target, who live full, authentic lives by overcoming the daily obstacles in their way. Its important to note that these people are not perfect, nor do they all engage in similar pursuits or share common roots. But they do have one thing in common: they know what they are living for. Each of them has a purpose, a meaning that fuels their life and that gives them the strength to persevere through the almost daily challenges they face. Their clarity of purpose provides a compass for them to knto navigate when to quit and when to persevere. So, from atop the shoulders of these giants, here are the three guiding principles to know when to persevere and when to quit:

Principle #1. Find your Purpose and Follow your Heart by Answering the Question “What do I desire?”

Steve Jobs nails it on the head when he says “Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.” Following your heart, or as Alan Watts puts it, what you “desire”, requires a high level of commitment and self-confidence. In order to find your purpose, you need to be able to articulate not only what you desire your life to be about, but also why its important to you. Your answer depends heavily upon your values, your beliefs, your present needs and your future plans, all of which are growing and changing as you add new experiences and people to your life. Answering this question does not happen overnight; it can take years, even decades, and the answer can change drastically over the course of your life. But ultimately, it’s the most important question you can ask yourself in order to find your “right” target. “You’ve got to find what you love”, Jobs says, “Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking, and don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And just like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years role on.”

The importance of following your heart and discovering what you desire is illustrated in the story of Scott Harrison. When you listen to Scott speak, its easy to get swept up in his stories. His sterling silver gray hair belies his age (he’s thirty nine), but the passion in his eyes and his expressive, lively mannerisms make him seem more like an idealistic twenty five year old. The son of an electrical engineer and a journalist, Scott grew up as an only child and moved from Philadelphia to New Jersey when he was 4. At the age of 18, he moved to New York city as part of a rock band and started playing gigs in local clubs. He grew his hair out long and enjoyed the nightlife New York had to offer. Over the course of time, he began to realize that the club promoters booking his band were making a heck of a living, and after six months when his band broke up, Scott decided to jump into the night life business. He quickly began partnering with a local promoter to book shows for the likes of Stevie Wonder, Prince, and Whitney Houston. “If you wanted to rebel, here was a way to rebel in style”, Scott said in an interview several years ago with Kevin Rose. “You’d work a couple nights a week, get beautiful people to come to your club, you’d walk in and get 50 drink tickets, and all your friends would drink for free… oh and by the way you got paid!” After several years in the business, Scott was one of the most successful night club promoters in the New York, getting paid thousands of dollars a month to drink Budweiser and Bacardi, and jetting off to Paris on the weekends to attend fashion shows for the heck of it.

Scott Harrison (INC.com)

On December 31, 2003, ten years after entering the promoter business, Scott was sitting on a beach in Uruguay watching the sunset next to his supermodel girlfriend while servants waited on them and the rest of their group (they had all arrived in private planes that afternoon to celebrate New Years). It was on that trip that Scott realized something. In his own words, “I was the worst person I knew… I was the most selfish, sycophantic, arrogant, no good… I really saw what I had become. I was emotionally bankrupt, spiritually bankrupt, and morally bankrupt. Every single thing I had held as a value I’d walked away from in this sort of slow burn over the ten years”. After he returned from Uruguay, Scott began to think hard about what he desired in his life, and after reconnecting with his faith, he ended up spending the next two years paying to be a photographer on a Mercy Ship, a floating hospital that travels to underdeveloped countries around the world to provide top quality medical care to those in need. The experience was transformational, and one of the many realizations he had over the course of his time in Africa was that one of the biggest underlying issues Mercy Ships wasn’t addressing was the lack of access to clean water. After moving back to New York in 2006, Scott founded the nonprofit charity:water, an organization dedicated to bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing nations. Since its inception, it has raised tens of millions of dollars to build thousands of wells around the world, and it has emerged as one of the most innovative, transparent nonprofits in the world.

Scott Harrison’s transformation is an extreme example, but it illustrates the possibilities that open to us when we stop to consider what we desire in life, and how we can use our gifts to make the world a better place. If you’re interested in hearing more of Scott’s story in his own words, I would highly recommend watching his 51 minute interview with Kevin Rose, and you can also check out charity:water’s website for more details on the work they do.

Scott Harrison, founder of charity:water

Footnote: If You Don’t Know Where to Start, Answer the Question “What DON’T I Desire?”

Scott figured out what he desired by first recognizing what he DIDN’T desire. He knew he was not living the kind of life he wanted, and he decided to quit his former life in order to take action and start searching for his purpose. A good way of gauging whether or not you should quit is to think about how you DON’T want to live your life. When you find yourself slipping into those things, take active steps to change things up. You don’t need to know exactly where you’re going in order to change directions.

Principle #2. Live your Passion, and Make Every Moment Count. You Can Persevere Through Just About Anything With a Good Reason WHY You’re Alive

As you discover your purpose, you need to trust in your ability to live it out and make everyday count. In other words, once you know the WHY, don’t be afraid to figure out the HOW. Randy Pausch and Steve Jobs both make it clear that you have too little time on this earth not to follow your heart and make the world a better place. “It is going to get hard and you are going to want to quit sometimes, but it will be colored by who you are, and more who you want to be” Will Smith says. Whether that means overcoming adversity to ensure your kids have more opportunities than you did, investing your time teaching and shaping the world’s future leaders, advancing public policy to empower the marginalized in society, working to promote human rights, ending food insecurity, or increasing access to healthcare and education, you can’t be afraid to follow through on your passion. As Will Smith says at the end of the video, “The first step, before anybody else in the world believes in you, is you have to believe in you… Why would you be realistic? What’s the point of being realistic?”

There are many good examples of people living their passion, believing in themselves and taking Will Smith’s advice and being unrealistic. Take Gollapalli Israel for instance, a Dalit in Chennai working to promote upward mobility for thousands of outcasts in Indian society amidst the climate of a rigid social caste system.

Or Wendy Kopp, the founder of Teach for America, a movement that is seeking to reform the public school system in America, opening new worlds of possibility for kids all across the country and creating a dedicated network of education reformers in all levels of the education system.

Or Fr. Rick Frechette, the Passionist priest working to provide high quality pediatric care, employment, and security to thousands of at-risk Haitians here in Port-au-Prince, despite the lack of infrastructure and stable political climate.

None of these people managed to reach where they are today without facing major challenges and obstacles, and I guarantee you all of them thought about giving up, but their passion and clarity of purpose helped inspire them to continue to pursue what they desire in life and continue to dream.

Principle #3. Quit and Move On When Your HOW Isn’t Getting You Closer To Your Purpose

Chances are you probably won’t find the best way to live your purpose on the first try, but each time you realize you aren’t moving in the right direction to live the life you desire, you need to be able to quit in order to find the path that resonates with your ever evolving values, beliefs, needs, and goals. William Whewell, an English scientist, is quoted as saying that “Every failure is a step to success. Every detection of what is false directs us towards what is true: every trial exhausts some tempting form of error. ” This is the case with finding your “right” target.

Now, an important thing to note is that does not mean quitting whenever things get difficult. As we have already seen, things will inevitably get difficult, and if you quit each time you encounter a challenge, you won’t make any progress towards any target for your life. It means you ought to quit when you realize your target for your life is not in line with how you want to live your life. I don’t think the concept of “strategic quitting” is stressed enough in society today, especially in the formative years of high school and college when students are trying to figure out what they want to do with their lives. I have several friends who went to colleges in the Midwest and the East Coast thinking they wanted to be doctors, and when they arrive they realize that they were competing with their classmates to see who could make it through all the weed-out classes and “survive”. If someone drops out of the pre-med track, there is a tendency to characterize them as being less intelligent or less able to handle the challenge of being a doctor. The same is true with students who switch out of engineering into business, or from a “hard” major to a “soft” major. The switch is (consciously or subconsciously) considered a failure.

However, most of the time “quitting” one major for another is simply an opportunity to more fully discover yourself, not a personal failure. It’s a successful step towards living the life you want to live, granting you more flexibility to find your passion and pursue your purpose. I switched from engineering to business before the start of my freshman year, and given all that has happened in the past two years, I think it worked out pretty well.

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The Three Guiding Principles for When to Persevere and When to Quit:

Principle #1. Find your Purpose and Follow Your Heart by Answering the Question “What do I desire?”

Principle #2. Live your Passion, and Make Every Moment Count. You Can Persevere Through Just About Anything With a Good Reason WHY You’re Alive

Principle #3. Quit and Move On When Your HOW Isn’t Getting You Closer To Your Purpose

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Now that the week is over, my batteries are recharging, and with these three principles in mind, I came back to the two questions I had been pondering: 1. “What am I doing?” and 2. “Why am I even here?”

I’m doing what I need to do in order to pursue my purpose and live my passion, and I’m here because I have faith I’m on the right path, making each moment count and allowing my desire for my life to evolve and grow with each step I take.

Those feel like good answers to me, and I hope you can say the same as you face the challenges that await you on your path.

– Aaron D.

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Thanks for visiting aarondanowski.com! Be sure to stay up to date on my travels by “Following” my blog by clicking on the button on the right hand side of your page!

If you would like to contact me directly, please do so via my email: adanowski@zagmail.gonzaga.edu

3 Comments

Posted on June 28, 2015 by adanowski95

Haiti, Latest Posts, Student Discernment

Feature

Many of my friends here at Gonzaga feel drawn to a nontraditional path after college. For some that means delaying their career to travel around the world, others choose to serve with the Peace Corps, Jesuit Volunteer Corps or Teach For America. Still others mean they want to find a career that allows them to work towards the upliftment of their brothers and sisters around the world. After reflecting on my own desire to travel and dedicate my life to the service of others, I’ve realized that this emerging generational desire to travel, serve and find meaningful work is a result of the quest for purpose in the modern age. In many ways, we live in a golden age of human achievement. Ever since the industrial revolution at the turn of the 19th century, disruptive technology has resulted in an increase in mass prosperity in Europe and North America. Smartphones, the internet of things, digital personal assistants, GPS, social media, iPods, tablet personal computing and hybrid cars are the latest iterations of this cycle. While these technologies have improved our lives by saving us time and offering us convenience, we’re busier than ever. Rather than dedicating the bulk of our time pursuing basic physiological and safety needs, we’re aiming to fulfill higher needs for self-esteem and self-actualization. Self-actualization is a natural state human beings gravitate towards as their basic needs are met. It involves moving further and further up the hierarchy of needs until you have a deep understanding of you inner values and morals and live according to them. According to Abraham Maslow in his book “Motivation and Personality“, there are many benefits to society and individuals as they move closer to self-actualization:

The pursuit and gratification of higher needs have desirable civic and social outcomes. The higher the need, the less selfish it must become, so people who have enough basic satisfaction to look for love and respect rather than food and safety tend to develop qualities such as loyalty, friendliness, and civic consciousness, and become better parents, husbands, teacher, public servants, etc.
Higher need gratifications produce more desirable subjective results (more profound happiness, serenity, and richness of inner life)
The pursuit and gratification of higher needs leads to greater, stronger, and truer individualism. People living at the level of self-actualization simultaneously love mankind most and are the most developed idiosyncratically.

Traditional post-college paths emphasize security, but increasingly young people are seeing to identify purpose and meaning in their lives as they attempt to fulfilling their higher needs for self-esteem and self actualization. In my mind, there are three primary reasons young people are choosing to pursue travel, service and impact careers:

1. We feel disconnected from the world

The United States is heavily insulated from the rich multiculturalism that defines the world today. Students rarely learn second or third languages, US news services give more coverage to the latest pop culture trend/scandal than meaningful international events (Left Shark anyone?), and the emphasis on geography in schools is abysmal. According to a National Geographic survey from 2006:

Only 37% of young Americans could find Iraq on a map
6 in 10 young Americans didn’t speak a foreign language fluently.
20% of young Americans thought Sudan was in Asia.
48% of young Americans believed the majority population in India was Muslim, not Hindu.
Half of young Americans couldn’t find New York on a map.
Fewer than 30% of young Americans thought it was necessary to know where countries featured in the news were located
Fewer than 20% owned a world map.

We live in the age of globalization and interconnectedness, and thanks to the internet and the proliferation of accessible information, more young people are realizing their relative insulation and are beginning to cultivate a global identity and perspective. As they strive to find purpose and meaning, young people are increasingly trying to connect stories of human pain and suffering to places on a map. Young people from privileged backgrounds are realizing that their lives are not “normal” experiences in our modern world, and this spurs them to travel and find their place in the global community.

2. We recognize the world is broken and empathize with the marginalized

This will make sense in the context of a quick story: When I was in Chennai, India with the Opus Prize, I was blessed to get to meet many “Dalits”, known in the US as “Untouchables”, who live in the slums of Chennai. When I looked into their eyes, I saw myself looking back at me. We didn’t speak the same language and were different in many ways, but we shared an essential element of humanity that I could immediately relate to. That has stuck with me… nothing explains why its them and not me sleeping under tarps and scrap metal. That is what I mean when I say the world is broken. Some of us win the genetic lottery and have access to opportunities that are simply out of the question for much of the rest of the world. This is where empathy comes in: Because I can imagine myself in their shoes, I feel a moral obligation to use my privilege to work towards universal access to opportunity, happiness and basic human dignity.

3. We recognize we’re spiritually impoverished and need help from the poor to remedy it

One of the best short articles I’ve ever read on this subject is titled We See From Where We Stand. Its by a man named David Diggs who lived in Haiti from 1988-1997 and co-founded the nonprofit Beyond Borders. When speaking about his experiences with visiting groups from the US, he says: “The more time I spent with visiting work groups, the more I saw them as rich refugees from the material world who came to Haiti hungering for more meaning in their lives. A week of really being with the poor of Haiti could have awakened them from their neediness and opened them to seeking the deep changes that world bring lasting satisfaction. But they were always so busy ‘helping’ the Haitians, that they never found time to be with them… the closer we stand with the poor, the more we can see from their perspective. Important things that were one invisible to us become clear. We see that we are all in need, rich and poor. The poor know they are in need. By contrast, we, the wealthy and powerful of the world, are often oblivious to our needs. We frantically try to fill our emptiness with more and more stuff, more and more activity, but without satisfaction. Our endless pursuit of material wealth is a sign of our spiritual poverty. But being with the poor — as opposed to merely doing things for them — can bring a spiritual awakening and be the beginning of our liberation. We see from where we stand, and , for many of us, to stand with the poor is to begin to see God for the first time.” Traditional post-college paths promise security and stability, but they don’t often allow much space to discover yourself. For young people in my generation, that is a crucial piece of their quest for purpose and meaning. I believe that the trend towards alternative post-graduate paths is here to stay, and this new stage of life will generate the social changemakers our world so desperately needs.

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Dealing with Reverse Culture Shock

“What Now?”: Final Lessons from a Semester Spent in Cameroon

“Follow your Heart”: Final Lessons from A Summer Spent in Haiti

Steve Jobs’ 3 Lessons for Pursuing Your Calling

1. When you feel lost, trust that the dots will connect looking backwards

2. When searching for what you love, be persistent… don’t settle!

3. When making the big decisions in life, remember that one day you are going to die

Lesson #1: When You Feel Lost, Trust That The Dots Will Connect Looking Backwards

Lesson #2: When Searching For What You Love, Be Persistent… Don’t Settle!

Lesson #3: When Making the Big Decisions in Life, Remember That One Day You Are Going to Die

Steve Jobs’ 3 Lessons for Pursuing Your Calling

1. Trust that the dots will connect when you look back on your life

2. Be persistent searching for what you love… don’t settle!

3. Remember you are going to die when making the big decisions in life

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Week 6 & Week 7: What is Life Like as an Expat?