- List 10 things that make you feel human.
- Emotion: both the highs and the lows.
- Autonomy: the ability to determine the course of my life.
- Feeling loved.
- Feeling hated.
- Music: listening, performing, and creating.
- Travelling.
- Meeting new people, listening to their stories.
- Working towards a goal.
- Meditating.
- Making mistakes.
- Articulate your philosophy of engagement as it pertains to your work with the GSIF / LVSIF.
My philosophy of engagement surrounds the accomplishment of one main goal: to impact someone else’s life in a positive way–no matter how small or how large, I always seek to lift someone up in any sort of capacity, and by doing so, I feel a reciprocal benefit from knowing I did all I could to make someone’s life easier. Why should I engage? What is the point of living if all that drives its purpose is the pursuit of fulfilling your own desires? One of the biggest things that makes me feel human is building relationships with other people. Imagine a world where everyone works to lift eachother up–I think it would be a much better place than one where competition is at the epicenter of progress. I don’t know what the reason is for existence. What I do know? Existence means nothing without experiencing it with those who are going through it with you. The question of how to engage then becomes a little more complicated when existence spans the entire earth, where cultures differ significantly, and thus, so does the human experience. How do you interact with someone whose life you know nothing about? Whose values and goals you know nothing about? The answer–is to simply go for it. Engage with respect, with curiosity, with love, and most importantly, with empathy. The key to understanding someone else’s motives for a particular thing is to first understand what in their lives led them to where they are in their mindset. Only then can you engage with meaning. Nothing will come out of an engagement where you refuse to understand their perspectives. This is the basis of our project. From a highly secular, academic standpoint, it is easy to view the spiritual, ritualistic viewpoints of “Autism” (or simply, mental disability) of Sierra Leoneans as crazy and unfounded. If we continue with this perspective buried in the back of our minds, we would never be able to truly understand the way they think, and thus, never accomplish our goal of implementing a systemic change in the way they view mental disability. We must connect with an open mind and have the goal of bringing long-standing positivity into the lives of the people we engage. This cannot be a hit and run, nor it can it be a relationship of dependency. Thus, to obtain this happy medium, it is imperative to really understand what drives the Sierra Leonean people to get up each day and do what they do, no matter how foreign the idea may sound. The challenge to this, especially pertaining to our project, is that the disconnect lies in spirituality. How could we tell them that their beliefs are wrong, without disrespecting them or causing a loss of dignity, especially to those mothers who had to make the heartbreaking decision to “return their child to God”? How do we tell those mothers their decision was one that did not have to be made? How can we respectfully spread awareness of a scientific truth without making people feel like their beliefs and values are being insulted? These are all things we need to take into consideration before we embark on our fieldwork this coming August. It is difficult to know the absolute correct way to approach such a sensitive topic to people who have endured existence in a completely different setting from you, who have learned about life in a completely different way than you. However, what is important is that, in whatever we choose to do and however we decide is best to engage, that we do engage–and with that engage with the goal of uplifting another human being in any capacity. I want my epitaph to read: “Emily Tasik–someone who gave until she could not give any more.”