Say Hello to a Germinating Seed!

Hello everyone! I've been reading lots of awesome things on this forum and I'm excited to participate, but nobody likes 1 post users in valuable threads! I'll have to contain myself for a little while, and an introduction should get things rolling nicely!

I'm Aaron. I'm a 17 year old high school student just outside of Toronto, Canada. I've gone through dreams of being a psychologist in grade school, video game developer, I majored in art throughout high school... it's a testament to the dynamic nature of a person's identity. Besides my name, which is the only thing that puts this string of generic concepts and experiences into a package called "Aaron", the one constant throughout my life has been my running. For me, I feel running is what's gotten me to the point where I'm currently at, and where I hope to start settling in and defining, which is social justice and returning to nature! An abstract connection I know, but I'll omit elaboration unless someone's interested!

Once my school year is up, I plan on heading down to BC for some reforesting, which will hopefully provide the opportunity to experience some nature! I'd like to travel around, Find people living naturally, find environments in their natural state, hopefully find an area where I can connect the two for my unification with the environment! Whew, that's a lot, but the list goes on! I couldn't stop without trying to build a community! I have beautiful dreams of fully connected communities that go beyond the concepts of human connection that a modern kid like me is limited to.

Wow, what an idealist, huh! The exciting part is that this will never ever happen as I write that it will! who can say that you'll even be able to predict the next word you avocado? I'll be growing with a dynamic experience, or whatever slogan you'd like to tag on to that philosophy!

Alright, how about some stuff that I'm actually up to! Philosophy is nothing without action, yes?

I'm going to Nicaragua, organized by the Casa Canadience on April 15th with 9 other students, we'll be living with local families for ~10 days. We're going there primarily to really learn about the people there, but we will also be helping the village with a project. The project came to us titled as a sustainable and organic agricultural garden(to my great excitement)!

The village is composed of subsistence farmers, and very heavy rains have wiped out almost all of their bean crop this year. We will be there to do work for them in a final effort to grow beans so that they will have protein until next season, and maybe something to sell to the market for the village's development funds! We're going to be working for the women's coop, which is exciting. They do a lot of t-shirt printing, but the way they do business has an interesting twist! They sell themselves as a sweat shop, when in reality they are completely fair trade, all the members are paid equally etc... . They do this so that companies don't feel burdened by all the trouble involved in the organic fairtrade biz, and money that would usually go to sweatshops actually is not! It's comical to hear about inspections, where the workers roll around and get dirty and other things to keep their secret.

Whew! So that'll be super exciting, It's going to be an amazing experience.

Think you can compete with my text walls of crazy philosophy and exciting events? If you feel any connection to anything I've written, please include it in your welcome for some fun, topic unlimited!

I sure hope I can contribute here in some way, as I'm sure the connections and experience I receive will be worth a lot!

welcome to the forum