When my friend told me about it, it sounded awesome. So I immediately started planning my own application for the fellowship. Believe it or not, it's a pretty simple application. It requires a short, 3-5 page, double-spaced essay addressing questions like, "Where do you want to go?", "Why do you want to go?", "Why now?", "Why you?", and "Why these places?".
I had a multitude of reasons for wanting to travel, reasons I wanted to go to specific places, and reasons why it should be now. But it really boiled down to two.
First, I've spent almost my entire academic career studying international issues and conflict. From high school when I'd sit in those comfy chairs upstairs in the local Barnes and Noble and read criticism about the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan (Woo Noam Chomsky!), to my time at IU and Syracuse where I majored in Politics, International Studies, Human Rights, and worked on various related research projects. I remember living in the "Global Village" dorm my sophomore year, a dorm full of people passionate about global issues, where I'd have long discussions about current events and engage in community projects to spread awareness about issues such as the crisis in Darfur. In a lot of these conversations and research projects, I'd often prescribe solutions to conflicts I knew relatively little about. How could I know much without even visiting these places? How could I possibly understand what was really going on?
This is one facet of what's motivating me to take this trip. After studying conflict all my life, I want to see and experience the places where many of these immense conflicts took place. To visit the killing fields of Cambodia, to see Vietnam almost 40 years after the war, to enter into Tibet and witness Chinese oppression, and to feel the intensity of the Arab Spring movement. As best I can, I want to see so that I can better understand what I've been studying all these years.
The second reason for these travels relates to the first. In my own life, I've found a practice called "mindfulness" has helped me overcome various personal troubles over the years. It's helped me control my Tourette's, and be more understanding and compassionate for myself and others. It's also completely transformed the way I try to deal with conflict. Though my college friends say they could never imagine me this way, when I was younger I used to be a very angry kid. I got into all sorts of trouble because of my hot temper. It was something I just couldn't control. Discovering mindfulness helped me get a handle on my angry, reactive tendencies. Not to mention my tics, which many (including myself 10 years ago) thought were completely involuntary. I'm convinced that if I can enjoy this much benefit from the mindfulness practice, others might grow from it, too.
Though I’ve been reading about and practicing mindfulness for years now, I just started conducting research on the topic at the University of Washington. But one of my hesitations has been that I have a completely Western perspective on a concept that was developed over millennia in the East. Again, I feel driven to get an on-the-ground perspective on this phenomenon. Therefore, I plan on spending much of my time staying in monasteries or in retreat centers, experiencing mindfulness from different perspectives than what I’m used to.
Combining these two, I want to better understand how people resolve conflicts – not only between themselves and others, but also within themselves. Mindfulness provides some useful techniques. I’m curious to see how many of these techniques are already being used in (post)conflict scenarios, and where they might be useful.
