One Paper Clip at A Time

Tonight, I watched a film titled One Paper Clip at a Time. An award-winning documentary, it shows touching scenes of how a group of students led by their teachers and principle of Whitewell Middle School, Tennessee, taking on a journey of which they would never expected to become an incredible success. The journey was called The Paper Clips Project.

They had intended to do a group project focusing on the Holocaust. The purpose was to educate the 8th grade kids on the importance of diversity and tolerance. Hence, they began searching doing posters and class group discussions on it. One day, one of the students found that the Norwegians during World War 2 had used the paperclip as a symbol of defiance against the Nazis.

And thus began their journey of collecting 6 million paper clips to represent the loss of the people during one of twentieth century's greatest tragedies. It was amazing how they took upon themselves to bring forth to educate themselves considering they were from the south of the United States, typically white kids with very little interaction with other kids other races and cultures.

All in all, at the filming, they collected a total of 29 million paper clips from all over the world. Finally, they managed to get hold of a old German railway car (supposedly have carried prisoners during the war), refurbished it with the help of the town community and filled it with 11 million paper clips. Subsequently, a memorial was held and the students themselves starts to educate other students from the state who come over to Whitwell on field trips.

It was a 2-DVD set, and I took the opportunity to have open the 2nd one. This time, it showed them in New York at ground zero of the World Trade Center. There, one of the kids could not help but feel so sad that he wanted to be alone.

This documentary had opened my eyes that our adult prejudices and intolerance can indeed be overcomed through education of young. Only then, that could this world in the future avoid the constant wars, acts of terrorism and move society towards a more compassionate treatment of people who are different.

I could still remember the speech made by one of the Holocaust survivors. It was so heart-wrenching how he and his family was separated into the Left and Right lines. Only he and his brother survived by being on the Right, while his mother and other relatives move on to the gas chamber. Similar to what Viktor Frankl had described in his book, The Search For Meaning which I had posted here.

Definitely, a film worth watching.

Rating: *****/5 stars

Three Signs of a Miserable Job

This book by Patrick Lencioni tells of a fable of a retired CEO, Brian Bailey who sets out to transform a small dilapidated pizza outlet with umotivated employees to people who take pride in their work.

Simple but a powerful story nonetheless, but have lots of meaning. In a nutshell:

Anonymity
People cannot be fulfilled in their work if they are not known. All human
beings need to be understood and appreciated for their unique qualities by
someone in a position of authority.
Notes: Give due recognition to people no matter what kind of job/work they do. Everyone is an essential part of the unit. Get to know them personally.

Irrelevance
Everyone needs to know their job matters to someone. Anyone. Without seeing a connection between the work and the satisfaction of another person or group of people, an employee simply will not find lasting fulfillment.

Notes: Link relevance to the job. Think in term of service and linkage to others in the entire team

Immeasurement
Employees must be able to gauge their progress and level of contribution for
themselves. They cannot be fulfilled in their work if their success depends
on the opinions or whims of another person.

Notes: Provide opportunity for the person to set his/her measurements that can tangibly seen through his/her own standards.

Rating: **** stars

Sadness in my Heart and Jewel's Hands

I was following up on my assignment of James W. Pennebaker and decided to do more research on him.

He had found that during September 11 attacks after the planes had crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, bloggers had expressed an "elevated rate of negative moods in the days after 9/11 - were generally quite healthy. They were psychologically distancing themselves from the emotional turmoil of the event."

So, I thought I would look up in YouTube for some videos of the traumatic event and found a couple of them. The first one, was posted by Brian Bezalel showing George Bush and the numerous images of the event with Jewel's song Hands. I felt that the song was most appropriate, sounded so soulful....

Second one here, was a about a lady named Melissa Doi. She was trapped at the 83rd floor of one of the towers, and I could really feel her despair and desperation while the policewoman handling the call was trying to calm her down. At some point, she had raised her voice which I could fully understand... and then suddenly I felt very sad in my heart... cannot really explain it but just like a sense of emptiness as I hear her pleas for help.

Third one here. After listening to Jewel's Hands in the first video, I was curious... I decide to look for her MTV video and there I found her singing... and again the scenes were of terrible devastation. The initial scenes were again of people suffering and crying, but at the end there were signs of hope and courage.... see the video and you will know what I mean.

Final one here. I decided to find Jewel's lyrics on video and finally understood the message she was saying.

In life, we will face ups and downs. In the end we can overcome whatever obstacles we encounter if we maintain our faith....

I do not know whether after blogging this here, would I feel better and meaningful. But definitely doing this assignment really had made me feel sadness but also hope that we can triumph in the face of adversity and troubles.