OK so there’s more than one best part however I’m going to lump them all into one multi-faceted ‘best’… which makes it plural, right? For those of you who know me, you’ll know it’s commonplace for me to make up words when the existing ones don’t fit the bill and for those of you who don’t know me….well now you know!
The first best is virtually meeting a community of like minded people who I would never have had a conversation with, whether through comments on a blog, email, phone or, sometimes when I’m really lucky, in person.
It also connects me to people in ways that has had a profound effect on my life, my work and my overall perspectives.
A few years ago a client of mine asked if she might share my blog with a dear friend of hers in Indonesia. I was honoured she would want to share it with others and told her as much. We’ve had the most amazing email conversations ever since. Will I ever meet this man and his family? Who knows? What I do know is he has touched my life in a way that goes beyond the impersonal internet.
This same client introduced me to a woman who she worked with years ago. This woman lives in Austria and we have been in touch ever since. A wonderful part of this story is last year about this time she flew to Ottawa so we could meet. We had dinner, talked face to face and made a connection that will stand the test of time.
Another of the bests is finding out about people’s amazing lives, their work, life-long passions as they share their comments and insights with me through this blog and the few others I write. On Perspectives, I can write pretty much what I want as it’s my blog. On Fast Company Experts, the topic is Leadership and even then, through comments, sharing of websites and links I find out about people who I wish lived just around the corner so we could meet and get lost in conversation.
One of these people who connected with me and who does amazing work is Sanford Shapiro from The Bend Learning Center. The Bend Learning Center helps children with learning differences understand and reach their potential. How much better does it get than that? When we teach people how to learn we open their worlds up to something beyond their wildest imagination because there are infinite possibilities available to them.
Even as adults, we learn something new every day, especially when we pay attention to the fact we don’t know all their is to know even if we are experts in various fields and professions. Even if we do learn something new, are we more apt to integrate it into our worlds or less as we get older?
We expect kids to learn at a certain rate and depth. What about us as adults? Even those without any learning difficulties, how many let a year go by without ever picking up a book?
How much are we missing because life is just too busy? So my challenge for this week is, what book are you going to start reading with the intention of finishing it?
A contemplative…
Donna Karlin
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Tags: blogging, connections, learning
