Toast to Change

Freedom Writers. Have you watched it? I did. 3 things etched in my mind: 1. Racial Harmony, 2. Communication, and 3. You can't have it all.

1. RH is something, I believe, most of us take for granted. As a former Humanities teacher, I know the effort the Humanitiies team in every school put in to make RH relevant and its importance poignant. Social stability, peace, racial harmony, cultural tolerance...whatever, and it takes hard work to achieve something like this, so never ever let us lose that, especially now, where the threat of terrorism is widely propagated against (a certain) religious extremist group. To me, that's segregation and pulling us wider apart from achieving something that's so important in the world today. I don't think we need to relive the horrors of the Holocaust again, do we?

2. How does one know what you're thinking or feeling if you don't communicate with him/ her? For the longest time, I'd had this warped notion that if you know me well enough, you would know what I'm thinking about. Well, that's just so not true. Now, I know very well the importance of communication because if communication breaks down, you will lose that connection, forever. Of course, I didn't have to watch this movie to know how important communication is. I just want to remind you in case you get bogged down with the nitty-gritties of everyday life that you forget about this.

3. Yeah, one just can't have it all. Erin Gruwell wanted so much to help her students, and made certain choices in her life and these choices changed her life, well, sort of (her husband left her). Of course, sometimes, certain choices we make in life will cause other things in the chain to become different and in turn, people in our lives make their choices according to the choices that we made earlier and then, everything becomes different. Sometimes, we may not even expect such changes or even want them, but it's something we must have the courage to accept, no matter how long it's gonna take.