I graduated high school equipped with the knowledge and confidence necessary for further world exploration. I've attended university, engaged in philosophical discussions, delved into cultural anthropology, and reframed my whole worldview. I've lived the stress and headache associated with immigrating to a new country; I've spent months in limbo, unable to leave this new land, while battling for a visa enabling me to live and work there. I now call Canada home. I've traveled abroad extensively, studied at a university in Uganda, toiled many hours on an organic farm in Ecuador, and I am currently teaching English in a small pueblo in Colombia. I've offered support and guidance to inner city youth, adults with developmental disabilities, caregivers of young children, and refugee newcomers to Canada. Given all these things, you might believe I've learned a thing or two about this world. And perhaps I have learned a thing or two but the reality is that, since graduating from high school, all I have really learned is that I know nothing at all. And that through this life journey I am still becoming. I will always be becoming. Each one of us is in a constant state of becoming, blooming and wilting, in our process of unfolding.

My curiosity of the world grows daily. I no longer believe my paradigm-my context, my faith, my worldview-is any more beautiful, any more profound, any more exquisite, any more correct than the paradigm of another being from a very different context. I've journeyed with a Muslim women, a boldly empowered feminist, who wears her hijab with pride. I've stood in solidarity with a friend who was forced to flee his land of birth, his family, everything he knew and loved because he spoke out against an oppressive government. I've watched as others perceive him as a threat to his new society, as unsafe, as radical. I've bore witness to the pain, mental turmoil, and ache to return home this unwelcoming has caused. And here I sit- white, American, privileged, safe, welcomed- in Colombia, not my country but his, the country he will never again set foot in. I cannot begin to understand this world, or to make sense of it. But I do know that all of our hearts share the same pulse. And, within this pulse, we are all still becoming. We are the same, you and I. Discovering, growing. Always unfolding.

This journey of life yields discovery, and the discovery is this: it is not in the knowing but rather in the unknown that I am the most alive, the most curious, the most faith-filled. So then, I seek to live not in a state of knowing but in a posture of curiosity and with an expression of openness. While I have much to offer, I also have much to gain. Through loving relationship with others Creator is not only glorified, but also known. And for me, this is to live. In curiosity. In openness. In connection with this beautiful, eerie, strange life. Always becoming. Always unfolding. In full embrace of this mysterious course. 

“This sky where we live is no place to lose your wings so love, love, love.”

-Hafiz