A Collection of Guiding Principles

(forgive the format - having issues with blogger!)

I have the good fortune of having an incredible number of incredible people in my life. They are people who do good and who do it well, whether their platform be their workplace(s), their volunteer work, or their relationships with friends/family/the world around them. Each is guided by a different set of core beliefs that weaves its way into nearly everything they do. It matters a lot to me that this blog be less about my personal adventures and more about the people I meet along the way, as well as about the people who I have the great luck to have in my life already. What I'm looking for from each of you, and which I'll add to with the stories of people I meet in my travels, is essentially a short story that explains one (or more) belief/value/principle that drives/guides/inspires you. You can email this to me at marygraceweber@gmail.com, and if you're okay with it, I'd love to post it here (if you'd rather it not be posted but still want to write one, I'd love to read it and am happy to keep it to myself). I plan to write mine at the end of this adventure (assuming, of course that this adventure has an end - should it not, then I'll just pick a good time and start writing), but in case examples of the sort of thing I'm looking for would be helpful, a few teaser concepts for what I'll eventually write will look something like "I believe in the power of a good story. It is true that a picture is worth a thousand words....but a short story well-told is worth at least 5,000." or "I believe in taking leaps of faith, because even if you don't know where you'll end, you can be confident that it will be on your feet..." or "I believe in the importance of Family - in loving your own unconditionally and in adding on to it wherever you go" or "I believe in trusting my instincts. Unless of course, they are my directional instincts, which never fail to get me lost, even with map in hand." What you provide doesn't need to be deep; it doesn't need to be the most important belief you have, or even one that you'll always believe; it can be funny or sad or serious; but what it can't be is shy - I expect solidarity here...if I'm sharing my life adventures with all of you, I'm expecting to hear from you too :) And lastly, as credit where credit is due: this idea comes from a podcast I like called This I Believe. Check it out if you'd like some inspiration, just keep in mind when you're writing that the "This I Believe" name is copyrighted by the organization, so avoid using it in the essays you email to me (that said, I'd encourage you to submit your own to the official creator of this idea - you can do so on their website)


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Can't think of a better way to get this started than with contributions from two of the students I met through my Swahili intensive in Arusha. Keem them coming, all!

Pancakes, Puzzles, and Changing the World (by Justine Brunnett)

“Okay, really, do you not know how to make pancakes that are all the same size?!  I can’t serve these!”  “I cannot believe those people out there!  They have me running around like crazy, and then they leave me only a two-dollar tip!!” “I just want to go home already.  When is this day going to be over?”  At my hostess job at a breakfast restaurant called Flapjack, comments like this are the norm.  We complain to each other about the customers, the work, the management, and our fellow employees as if it were our job to serve complaints rather than coffee and eggs.  I am just as guilty of it as everyone else.  But I don’t think it has to be that way.  I truly believe that in everything you do, you can choose to do it grudgingly and apathetically, seeing it as just work, nothing more.  Or, you can choose to do it passionately and joyfully, viewing even what seems like the most menial task as an opportunity to brighten up your little corner of the world.

                At the end of November, Flapjack transformed from a regular restaurant into a Christmas wonderland.  The wall separating the customers from the kitchen area was decked with boughs of evergreen laced with velvety bows and gold bulbs, and a life-sized tin Nutcracker saluted people as they walked in.  The centerpiece of all the decorations, however, was a large, elegantly-decorated Christmas tree with soft white lights right in the middle of the restaurant.  The other hostesses and I found it a bit inconvenient since we had to squint to see through its deep-green branches when a new customer came in, but even we had to admit that it was very pretty and certainly radiated the Christmas spirit.

                One Saturday a couple of weeks before Christmas, the restaurant was very busy, as it usually is on the weekends.  A crowd of maybe twenty or thirty people stood in front of the door, still bundled in their winter coats and hats and scarves, waiting restlessly for a table and a warm cup of coffee.  We had been running around like crazy all morning, but we had reached a point at which all the tables were full and there was nothing for us to do until some other customers left and a new table opened up.  As I was catching my breath, mentally checking that I had done all the work I could do for the moment, one of the servers, Bill, came up and tapped me on the shoulder.

                Bill has been working at Flapjack since he was sixteen or seventeen years old.  Now, he in his forties and has a second job as a manager at UPS, but he still works at Flapjack on the weekends because, as one of the other servers put it, “he has a following.”  On this particular Saturday, I saw why.

                “Justine,” he said, “Go up to that little girl there and tell her that there is a present under the tree for her.”  He motioned to a blonde-haired girl of about six wearing a puffy pink jacket, patiently standing with her family.  “Uh, okay,” I said, a bit confused.  Sure enough, though, there was a little wrapped box under the tree, so I went up to the girl, bent down, and said, pointing at the gift, “Hey honey, there is a present under the tree for you.”  A slight surprised smile crept onto her face, and she looked back shyly at her parents.  They nodded and gently pushed her toward the tree.  She picked up the little box and hugged it to her chest, with the same slight, shy, yet satisfied smile. 

Later, when I went back to her table, I saw that she had unwrapped a little cardboard box containing a puzzle.  It was just a small gift that Bill had probably picked up at the dollar store, but it had obviously made that little girl’s day.  When she saw me, she said sweetly, “Thank you for telling me about the present under the tree!”  I walked away from the table with a huge grin.  Getting to be a part of Bill making her day made my day.

I soon discovered that Bill had brought a whole Santa-sized bag of puzzle presents with him and was distributing them to all the kids who came into the restaurant that weekend and the next.  For a relatively small amount of money and whatever amount of time it had taken him to wrap all of the presents, he had transformed his lowly pancake-serving job into an opportunity to make kids, and me, smile.  It is my goal—albeit a goal that I often fail to realize—to follow that example by seeking out ways to put a little extra effort into everything I do in my day-to-day life in order to show people that I care.

I think my former Kiswahili professor, Mwalimu Choti, said it best when our class was over at his house for a Kenyan dinner.  He was trying to convince my friend and me that we should go to grad school, and we both protested, saying that we don’t want to wait any longer to go out into the real world and do things and make change.  A few grad students from his advanced class agreed that they sometimes felt like they were delaying their real life by going to grad school.  My professor, himself a grad student, admitted that sometimes it did feel like that.  “But,” he said, “Everyday, no matter what you do, you have the opportunity to make someone’s day.  If you can just make one person smile, then you have changed the world.”

On Education, Perspective and Equality (by Allison Punch)

One of the most formative conversations of my life took place when I was seventeen and in Kithoka, Kenya. I had become friends with a brown-eyed girl in her final year at the Bishop Lawi Imathiu Secondary School (BLISS), a school my church had funded the building of several years earlier, while spending a week at BLISS teaching poetry and English grammar. She and I shared the Kimeru name, "Makena," meaning joy, which I had been given the year before, on my first trip to Kenya. Jackie Makena and I talked for awhile and she described her day to day schedule to me. Jackie lived over an hour walk from the school she was so proud to attend. That conversation was almost four years ago, my senior year of high school, and as I enter my senior year of college, I still carry with me the passion for education that Jackie displayed. She woke up at 3:40 a.m. every morning to study, take care of her younger sisters and walk to school. For a high school student who considered myself an early riser for getting out of bed at 6:30, the thought of waking up at 3:40 was unimaginable. After I left Kenya, I knew I would be doing Jackie a disservice if I didn't learn from her and do my best to channel her hardworking spirit. I have a picture of the two of us that I treasure and have kept hung up near my bed for the past four years; she's always motivating me to get out from under the covers and do my absolute best.

When I returned to Kenya after my freshman year of college, I met up with Jackie. She had not received high enough marks on the national exam to go to University and was trying to figure out her next step. I couldn't help but feel the devastating unfairness that someone who worked so hard (3:40 AM!) didn't meet a government standard to reach her goals. The majority of BLISS grads who received University-admission were boys. Many boys, in their final year of BLISS, would live together in an apartment in town, closer to the school, to cut down their commute and spend more time studying for the national exam. Each afternoon, one of the boys would return to the apartment to prepare dinner while the rest studied using the electricity at BLISS until late. This to me is another example of resilience and dedication to education; however, it is also a manifestation of inequality - it's not safe for high school girls to live in town alone, nor are they able to get away from their responsibilities at home. 

I guess the guiding principle I am describing here is the value of education, the importance of keeping your life in perspective, and the work that needs to be done for equality. I don't pity Jackie, or any of the Kenyans I have met over the years for that matter, but hearing her story put my life and my problems in perspective - this is important at any age, but I know I am blessed to have had this from seventeen. The older I get, the more I meet people who have not been as lucky as me to not yet have the opportunity to travel and meet such wonderful people who shape perspectives (or, alternatively, somehow through all their experiences seem to miss that the world does not revolve around them - that is another, very puzzling story). I am honored to contribute to MaryGrace's project of collecting "life philosophies." I love the idea - it is both celebrating our own and adding to them by learning about others'. I can already feel MaryGrace shaping my own as we prepare to go to the Kenyan coast together. There are a lot of things that drive me, so many people who have shaped and inspired me, but I have learned a lot of lessons from my friendship with Jackie Makena.