[Originally Published — February 2011]

“Conscience is a man’s compass” — Vincent van Gogh

Have you ever felt like you could hear your ancestors when you opened your mouth? Like those long and gone, compelled your instinct. People say that we shouldn’t trip about feeling inadequate in life, but rather embrace the fact that we are powerful beyond measure. Our personal relationships take tolls on those whom we dare to share our most unshaven, hungover, disheveled, and rhythmless states of disarray (i.e. post-new year’s eve shenanigans).

Some of the enlightenment I can claim to have regarding our place as bipedal Crown Royal vacuums (homo-sapiens) on this earth has come from two men: Carl “you know he hot boxed through his dissertation” Sagan and Amir Rustam “my beret smells like liberation and Zoroastrian pistachio” Mofagham (my grandpa). My favorite of Sagan’s books, “Pale Blue Dot,” contains a very interesting idea that I’ll try to summarize here….but please—hater nation— no backsees if I’ve completely missed the boat.

From billions of miles away, the Earth looks like a dot. The bitter struggles and the quests for power seem trivial. And yet our entire world—every person we know or knew and loved or hated—has been confined to this dot. My grandpa would often remind me courtesy of his uber-expensive calling card from Tehran, that all the joy, all the pain, all the lessons I’ve learned since leaving the war in Iran, all has been on the surface of a single rock hurtling through space thereby reminding me that any pain I’ve ever felt is merely an experience primed to connect me to others. So back to Sagan, who believes that the earth is a rock perilously vulnerable not only to chance collisions with asteroids, but to the vices of our species, like greed and vanity (and perhaps season three of Jersey Shore)—three integral ingredients for war (and sloppy seconds). In education, I’ve felt responsibility to myself and to the planet to bond with students, to overcome my desire to turn a blind eye to the students who didn’t care enough to help themselves; and to realize that, in the cosmic scheme of things, the temporary illusion of being someone’s mentor or authority is not worth the time and hard work expunged to gain it, if you are only here to serve yourself. My grandfather told me, before I left Tehran airport to immigrate to the United States, that “no matter how obscure, and frighteningly vast America may seem, there’s no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save you from adversity if you take your privilege for granted.” In other words, be your own hero and by doing so, others will follow. That’s deep on some other damn it feels good to be king, shit. And so with that, ladies and gentlemen, my survivor’s guilt –for having survived the war– was borne.