Greetings, GLF community. I honestly am overwhelmed as usual but at the same time I am doing aboslutely nothing. I am on the couch in my better than average Santa Barbara home, bored staring at a computer screen, and just finished with a substantial bowl of ice cream while looking at a pile of books I haven't gotten to reading. And now, I really don't know how I will summarize what's happened in my life in the last year having not actually communicated to the group as a whole . So; getting to the point, which I don't know what it is, but whatever, I have been trying to find hope in this world full of crap. I have taken on a depressing stance of "Who gives a f*** about life because the only three themes that really have power in this world are greed, materialism, and a hierarchy of power and everything else just falls under it so why even bother because humans are living at the cost of the planet that supports us, the beauty in the planet, and our own dignity, so I'm just gonna sit in the corner, get average grades, and blast loud rap music through my headphones". This was accompanied my monitoring, social alienation, and most of all, depression. Each loss seemed to be a big loss and there really was no wins. So that's when I just started to not care what people thought of me. And more than the majority of the time that I opened my mouth it resulted in a political rant talking about how people eat factory farmed food, use corrupt oil, listen to crappy music, are subject to the social system, cogs in the education systeem, etc., etc.,. Ok, you get my point, and this was my attitude for a little more than half the year with the depression warming up in the beginning climaxing in the middle and eventually cooling down because at a point I realized that I can figure out bad things about everyone as I have with coaches on sports teams with teachers in the classroom, with kids and who they hang out with, and frankly anything with the possibility to be hated but I seriously just did not have the energy to hate anymore. But one thing that really struck me is that through all this my peers still managed to have respect for me even if they were avoiding me, which I will get back to later in the story. Silmultaneously, over the course of this time, I managed to write over 30 raps all pretty much filled with anger for one thing or another, most of them I threw away, also during this time reading historical books on Malcolm X, Mao Ze Dong, and the roots to Secret Societies, with a few positive things scattered including attending a music conference, creating a song(check it out here:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq-oyfvWPnc), doing weekly chinese classes, going skiing in mammoth with my dad, cousin, and family friends, and an amazing trip to Kenya which you can check out here:http://markginkenya.blogspot.com/, but still keeping that negative view more or less. The moment where the snowball started to slowly tip over the mountain, was during my midyear trip (my school goes on 3-5 depending on the grade 1-2 week school trips over the year in the wilderness), and we were backpacking in the backcountry of Santa Barbara. And there really wasn't any particular moment but I was able to find self awareness through interacting with nature by falling out of trees taking sulfur baths hanging out with mules that were carrying our food holding turtles, really whatever happened in the spur of the moment. Added to the pure nature which made me happy in itself were the authentic interactions between the other students and myself brought out by the intense exercise and lack of electronics at camp combined with swimming holes and campfires where Jim, the teacher who led the trip would read a book to us, and the students would recount memories from the day. That trip really turned it around for me with the things I said above but on a much deeper and more complex/detailed level that could only be described as depth. If we were to compare this to a graph in math, the x and y coordinates would be people speaking about something happening, but in order to understand the z coordinate, the depth, you have to experience that particular thing. Because of that trip I was able to become more peaceful. The next thing I would learn would come in the next seven weeks of academic school before we had our end of the year trip to the southwest for the eighth and ninth grade, while the sixth and seventh graders including my brother went to Marin. During the course of these seven weeks I started to reintegrate myself with the class, by participating, and more importantly enjoying discussions in world history and english class, and being more tolerant in physics and math, while enjoying spanish as always. Also acutally talking to my classmates in life skills or ping pong and kind of morphing. But World History was especially interesting to say the least the whole year. Now the class was not straight world history but rather an exploration of philosophies that have been used in the world from the eastern religions of hinduism buddhism taoism and confucianism, to modern india and china and legalism and maoism and the ideas of gandhi. During the spring though we studied the western religions of Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, from their roots but also how they effect modern society and we discussed concepts such as zionism and jihadism and the roots to the conflicts involving 9/11. We also delved deeper into the spread of Christianity and how the invention of the printing press changed a lot of things. But cutting to the chase, at the end of the class we had to write a final explaining four pillars of belief that we have, and my concept was yin yang, or duality, or as I described it Universal Balance. In a yin yang there is a white half with a black dot and a black half with a white dot. The black half with the white dot was where I was for the first part of the year, where the universe was bleak with only a white dot to live for, but for the second part of the year, after I recognized and identified positive things in people and in my life I was able to compress the negative energy and use the positive of "light" energy to battle it, which is how the universal balance works. So over those seven weeks by using wisdom and compassion from others I was able to not just become a happier person at school, but in my life. I even surprisingly made some friends. One of them being this really wise guy named Kieran, who basically is in my 9th grade class but knows a lot about things such as human psychology, advanced filming, bike mechanics (although a lot of people know about this at my school because I got to a biking school and there are classes on it) intrapersonal intelligence, and over all a selfless wisdom in which is summarized in one thing that he told me in response to "How can I be happy". Expecting the typical "idk" answer I was left in a slight schock when he answered, "Now I don't have all the answers, but one thing to look at is this chart of maslows hierarchy of human needs" "As humans we need a certain amount of things to survive and the goal is to eventually get to self actualization and the process itself often times helps people to be happy". Or something along the lines of that. He continues with "Once you get to the top of the pyramid that's when you get your satisfaction from getting others to the top with you and rather than focus on those who aren't in terms of social relations, be happy for and with those who are and then you will gain happiness yourself". So this coming from a guy my age really inspired me to get my ish together, to say the least. After seven weeks of culmination with our classes the 9th grade was off on our end of the year trip. So we got into our van groups and head of for Canyon De Chellys, of the far eastern corner of Arizona. Before we left our principal said, leave your emotional baggage behind the Colorado river. So after a long drive of gas station stops, pointless conversations, and semi-trashy music, we arrived in Kingman AZ. We camped there that night and had to get up and keep driving the next morning, the campfire calmed us down a little bit, but we, an eclectic and energetic group of teenagers, really had no idea what we were in for. We arrived at a sign that said "Canyon De Chellys" and that is where we got out of the vans and the Navajo guides drove us into the reservation. While driving into the canyon I was asking our guide D.J. about Navajo words and he was also answering other questions about the canyon. Before we knew it we were under 600 foot beige and red walls with ravens flying right above us and cotton from the cottonwoods blowing everywhere in sight. The 9th grade spent to magical days listening to Navajo stories, taking hikes with petroglyphs and hearing about the history, and talking to navajo people in the area while also playing music and basketball with eachother. But the defining moment in the Canyon De Chellys portion of the trip was the Navajo Prayer one of our guides did for us. It was called "walk in beauty". He did it for us in English, and as soon as he started to speak Navajo the wind started gusting like crazy, and as soon as he stopped, the wind stopped, too. We (The students faculty and whoever else on the trip) then went on a silent, 45 min. "beauty walk". He said a different prayer for each of us mine was something about not fearing loneliness or setbacks because my shadow is my companion and he will tell the holy ones of my good deeds and that I am a very special person destined to change the world and I need to come out of my cocoon and spread my wings like a butterfly. A lot of us got epiphanies on this walk about our lives, the school year, purpose, etc., etc. After the Canyon De Chellys experience the 9th graders met up with the 8th graders at the Grand Canyon. This was the first of 8 camp fires on the trip with the 8th and 9th grade and with each of these fires 3 or 4 9th graders were "honored". "Honoring" is where one 9th grader picks the name of another 9th grader out of a hat and than is supposed to write a five minute letter with the goal of the letter to leave the person feeling honored after the letter is finished. Of course they were all different: deep, light, complex, simple, but the main goal is to capture the essence of the person being honored and let them have a positive mirror to inspire them with the letter. The letter I got left me in tears, because it gave me closure in the fact that a person was able to articulate the whole of me, even better than I could myself. After the first campfire the next morning 46 kids walked down into the grand canyon on the treacherous bright angel trail and back up. That was a warm up for the 6 days of biking that were to come from the grand canyon to sedona. There were many stories to be told, but besides the honoring, the most important stories were found on the rides where people were helping eachother and connecting in ways that are hard for an average person to believe. On the last night everyone was bauling or atleast the 9th graders and we did the go around and everyone shared their stories and I performed a rap while crying full of grattitude and understanding for the school. Then the 9th graders did the ceremony of the ashes where they take ashes from the ash can of all the previous fires and put them in the fire symbolizing graduating from the school and in the mornign the 8th graders put the ashes back in the can symbolizing becoming 9th graders. After that the 8th graders took the train while the 9th graders took the vans and camped at and swam in lake mead one night and slept under the stars, and then headed home. There is one last thing that we 9th graders did before graduating: Rites of Passage: Our formal graduation after our graduation on the trip. We each speak one person who means a lot to us to speak for us and they prepare a speech. I asked my Chinese teacher Daniel to speak for me and he explained my transformation in the three years since I've met him and he gave me a new Chinese name ( Referring to the Navajo experience,since I have gone through a metamorphosis from a caterpillar to spread my wings and become a butterfly. Walk in beauty.) So that is pretty much my update, it is now 11:00 pm here and I have a College Ocean Swimming class tomorrow so I should probably get to sleep but I will conclude with this quote; "When you forgive, you in no way change the past-but you sure do change the future". And on to the next chapter. I will welcome it with open arms,
With Grattitude,
Mark
