The Morning of Tuesday 10/23 I heard my alarm buzz for the 3^rd time, it was 7 a.m. Why did I try to wake up so early just to exercise?? Well I don’t know but I went back to sleep anyway. The night before I had stayed up until 1:40 a.m., crazy. Imagine then waking up exactly at 9:03 when you have class at 9. FUDGE. I jumped out of bed and went outside where the Antarctic weather welcomed me and froze my face. When I finally made it to class my first though was about having a debate. Was globalization good? Or was it bad? It got exciting last week with the debate about the eastern islanders. But it wasn’t quite the same, this one turned out much different. We talked about Globalization and how it affects sustainability in a positive or negative way from what I remember it was this topic of materialistic culture vs. free market and free trade. I am honestly still confused on whether globalization is good or bad. From my hippie perspective it is not good but when you think about it, I really couldn’t live without it.

Oh yeah and we meditated, it was great. Well for starters I heard a cat screamed. It was weird, some say it was a kid acting like a cat, but I could of swear it was a cat. Anyway, the meditation part… It’s hard. Controlling your thoughts. Letting them pass by like you see cars passing by on the freeway. No emotional attachment, no feelings just being in a neutral state.

What did I contribute to the learning community this week? We were asked to share some of our findings about mindfulness, it was amazing the fact that we all found the same thing

1. Being present
2. No strings attach

We as intelligent individuals know the steps to be mindful then why don’t we do it? Speaking for myself only, I find it extremely hard. I am always fogged by thoughts. I mention how mindfulness was about attentiveness, and our attention lowers when we are stressed out or have a wondering mind. I do have both issues.

What was my major takeaway? Acknowledging just how important meditation is. Honestly If I could master it, I could probably rule the world. Well maybe. But on a serious note I think it is something that should be treated as important as exercising daily. It is something that I can see it helping in the long run. About globalization it probably was the realization that our world is so messed up, that we want the best for us, and we don’t care about anyone else. There’s a lot of hypocrisy in this society, and I think that’s one of the reasons that will take this world down.

My mindfulness practice was okay, it was honestly hard trying to let go of the thinking process of consecutive thoughts. Trying to stop my own brain from formulating more evaluations on what’s on my head. But I think it got easier day by day, I did not see any change as far as how my mind functions, but I think that is because it is yet to early to see the benefits.