Thoughts, abundant

“If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see” — James Baldwin

My name is Serena and I am a periodically passionate environmentalist and restless thinkworm still learning how to ask the right questions and no stranger to capricious, existential thought while sitting in the middle of STAT101. Welcome to my cerebrum manifested.

My intention is to discover, prototype, and give honor to my journey of discovering my personal, social, and academic voice. There have always been problems in our world. I’ve just finally begun to truly care for them. I don’t know how to talk about these things yet, I just know that they are a problem and that they matter.

Welcome to my learning process. Within these paragraphs, quotations, and splices of genuis that I extract from others, I hereby consent to learning in public, because I’m not sure how else to justify our personal problems that are largely a product of politicization.

I am not studying any of this in the classroom, so bear with me as I inevitably struggle to transform my student archetype into that of a proactive thinker. Here, I will learn out loud in ways that the classroom does not provide. My personal hope is that through archiving my thoughts in the infinite today, that over the years, I might discover my passion in recognizing the needs of others— creating a mental space for incremental change, sharpening of my senses, awareness, and pushing the boundaries of my limited perceptions. There is no carefully prescribed logic model or holy schema that I’ve found necessary to subscribe to for this process. Rather, and hopefully, by dwelling in the mental mansions of intentionality, feeling, bravery, and inquiry, I will be able to eventually dance with wisdom.

I hold myself accountable to you to practice radical honesty. This intentional act of quiet courage through transcriptions of my mental modals come from a place of very uncomplacent vulnerability.

Things I think about and would like very much to talk with you about:

• Disrupting a space — how we fill spaces vs. how we interact with them. How might we create a space that optimizes social interaction? How race and gender affect the type of personal space we subconsciously occupy. An eye-opening activity that a mentor told me to do was the next time you are at a coffee shop, take notice of how gender, wealth, and race dictates and influences the quantified amount of space that an individual uses up. Or when walking down Locust Walk — how do they/she/he hold theirself? At what angle from the ground do their eyes rest?
• De-constructing Buddhist philosophy and secular ethics
• The unchecked ego and the fact that social entreprenuers and non-profit leaders are raised onto pedastals.
• Creating social good — should this categorized as pleasurable or sacrificial? Confronting the duality in our economic system that prevents greater altruism.
• Transcendental Meditation — basically meditating on the fact that we might die at any second and the successive thoughts&actions we perform or wish to produce in reaction to fully realizing our momentary livelihood despite our sedentary lifestyle.
• Servant leadership
• Balancing feminine and masculine values
• “Staying woke”
• Serendipity’s role in successes
• Social entreprenurism and social movements. Can business fuel social movements in ways other than funding protests or marching their employees (i.e. Ben&Jerry’s @ the NYC People’s Climate March — not being critical, actually very groovy!)?
• The tension between scholarship and activism.
• Fundamental disconnect in every. single. aspect and domain of life. From Detroit to its rich suburbs to our fucking wifi.
• You are always better off doing something rather than nothing. Are you really though?

“A lot of times you have to do something simply because no one else will do it” — The do-er archetype

My working hypotheses and presumptions (for better or worse)

• People are basically good. The Buddha nature is everywhere.
• Behind every act of bravery is vulnerabilty

Still seeking in these domains:

• Finding a practice here at Penn that allows me to center and quiet my mind
• Aligning passion and purpose. Not on that train yet!!!
• Falling victim to decision-fatigue. Being less of a maximizer and more of a satisfier!!
• Establishing a morning routine that is both active, reflective, and realistic.

Things you might hear me say (that I have learned from others)

• I’d like to buy you coffee and pick your brain
• Create opportunities for people to show up
• Listen to your gut, even when it goes against the grain
• Tell me your story

“We cannot solve the problems with the same kind of thinking that created them.” — Einstein

Here is advice and knowledge that I received last week from individuals I deeply admire and respect that I am still trying to digest, process, and edit into my own understanding of the truth. I have put them into quotations to establish separate entities, but these are not verbatim by any means. If any of these leave you thinking at the end your reading, I would love to chat.

• “Operate on the mindset that nobody needs you. You don’t need to help anyone. Follow what you love, and hopefully along the way, you’ll be able to help people. The very act of operating on the mindset that you are here to help people means that you are dependent upon them to find meaning. The poor don’t need you- you need the poor.”
• “Racism is built into everything. It is manifested physically. In my neighborhood in North Philly where I grew up, every time it rained even, just a little bit, the sewage system would overfill and it would flood the streets with disgusting smells and litter everywhere. I remember one time being in Old City near a row of townhouses after it had poured rain, and the streets were perfectly drained. It smelled like it should have — the beautiful smell of rain. I would love to conduct an experiment looking at the sewage systems in different neighborhoods across America. I can tell you that I have a firm hypothesis that they’re going to look different when you enter into different racial and economic communities.”
• Everyone’s a little queer and a little racist
• The concept of turning actions into cultures: i.e. A Latina sorority would fundraise every year to bring in girls from an inner-city middle school for an education empowerment program. This action soon because a nationwide annual program that has now become engrained into the culture of their sorority.
• “Incredibly powerful point brought up by a junior in the Civic Scholars program. In her economics class, in the context of basic supply and demand theory, the city of Chicago decided to shut down public schools due to lack of attendance. Simply diminishing the over-supply of schools to meet the actual demand from attendances. Thus, efficiency is achieved! However, the negative externalities and other side of the face of the coin of truth was failed to be addressed. In Dr. Stovall’s Gutmann Lecture, he remarked that actually, when the city of Chicago shut down all those public schools and forced rival schools to suddenly conglomerate into one space, what do you think happened? It is what would have happened to any rivalry schools yesterday being forced to compete for the same resources today. School fights, hatred, violence. The economics of this decision looked stellar. The humanistic element was completly tragic and largely ignored.”
• Me (serena) — I felt very discouraged about the practice of Mindfulness after attending the Wisdom 2.0 conference last month in SF, that merged bigshots in the mindfulness industry (i.e. Jon Kabbat-Zinn, Byron Katie, Chade Meng Tan) with business leaders (i.e. Eileen Fisher, Mark Bertolini at AETNA, Steward Butterfield at Slack, Karen Mey at Google). Apparently “life coaching” is a thing. To me, it felt like mindfulness was used by the 1% to help the 1%, and those things are bullshit to me. After returning from the conference with new friends (or rather my first friends) from Silicon Valley and a selfie with Ryan Higa, I decided to pack my mental bags and leave the space of “mindfulness”. I was especially discouraged because I thought this space was something I wanted to pursue as a career. Then, me and a few TSIS fellows skyped with Seaon Shin, Wharton grad and serial social entreprenuer and within a few minutes, she dismantled (no, not the white heteropatriarchy, sorry @johnholmes) my bad habit of mistaking one circumstance to be the entire picture. She challenged me to question my views, then continue questioning my views. Again, and again and again. Ask why three times. Recognize how skewed the population at Wisdom 2.0 is. The cover price to attend the conference in the middle of SF costed hundreds of dollars. Of course rich white folk are going to be the predominant population there. Mindfulness is a beautiful, diverse, powerful practice. It ‘s got incredible implications for our youth, our communities, and ourselves. I recognized that as long as I don’t mix my personal practice of mindfulness with the business and industry of it, then it still remains pure.

Current Reading List

• Leading from the Emerging Future: From Eg0-System to Eco-System Economies — Katrin Kaufer
• The Next American Revolution- Sustainable Activism for the 21st century —the late Grace Lee Boggs
• Let My People Go Surfing — Yvon Chouinard, Founder&CEO of Patagonia

*not sure how to further indent on Medium yet crap now i just changed font and size and don’t know how to change either back yet. uhh ok well just create the imaginaire that I am still typing in the same font and size as I was previously. what i wish to communicate through a *ideally smaller font and indented line is that I have not yet read Let My People yet but will happily start it with someone and be each other’s soundboard for our reactions!

I am not sure how people blogs, so I suppose I will end with one of my favorite things to do: writing uplifting emails! email me at sbian@sas.upenn.edu and I’ll add you to the list.

Last week’s email:

Good Morning Honeyies!!! Rise and shine beautiful humans!!!! I am back with my (hopefully) uplifting emails to brighten your days and weeks!!

Daily affirmations and power stances are really important for cultivating confidence andself-worth. See example and create ur own power stances+script. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qR3rK0kZFkg

Listen to this when you walk to your 9am or throughout an unnecessarily chilly, rainy day…oh wait TODAY: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mhtJduoCZ0

Let’s talk about every day heroes!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=160&v=EY6NRwiCY4A

Thich Nhat Hanh, renowned Buddhist scholar has some words of wisdom on peace n love for you all (http://wtf.tw/ref/nhat_hanh_being_peace.pdf) — The piece I selected is Chapter 5 which begins at page 65 but read any and all!!! A very easy read, but incredibly moving and perspective changing piece.

Carey Landon sent me a space video if u want to experience or cultivate feelings of awe and wonder!!! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLFr_CR2naq_GKR51V_l4ECL9iexYlo2-h

And if this week just really crapping sucks for you…MEDITATE ON IT!!!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92i5m3tV5XY

I am very grateful for you taking the time to read this. Email, comment, Facebook, or call me with your thoughts and critiques (248–892–5888).

Calmly,

Serena