Friendship|Mentorship|Authorship

My favourite radio show is this program on ICI musique called “un nomade dans l’oreille”. Translates: “a nomad in the ear”. Catherine Pépin plays the most beautifully eclectic music every Saturday night. She motivates me to dance, daydream, and create. One of the many reasons why I am a diehard CBC radio fan. Listening to someone over the radio frequency has a differently  profound effect. May be I am just reminiscing about times when my father religiously listened to the world news on Radio Monte Carlo… No relation to Monaco whatsoever.

I would like to stay on this theme of a nomad. I would not know about ICI if it was not for this dear friend of mine. A fellow Dentist. Someone who is cultured in a very modest kind of way. Someone with whom I can discuss the emotions evoked by music, art, film… I think being able to share those kind of emotions requires relinquishment of some pride; to be okay with a pinch of vulnerability. I can’t help but think about the Kruger-Dunning effect right now. Real friendship creates this safe space for us to relinquish our weaknesses. It creates this healthy space for competition. It is good for the creative soul.

I have a nomadic mind. Freeing your mind to be imaginative is dichotomously precarious and grounding. There are times when friendship is just not enough to push you over that edge and let your mind hang glide through its metacognitive processes.  I am a firm believer in the power of mentorship. I grew up with the motto of “I am the vassal to whom teaches me a letter”. My mentor is another colleague who is a dentist. Someone who is eternally loyal, hard-working and inventive. He does not just network, he connects. I argue that mentorship and collegiality are coexistent. They are not mutually exclusive. Mentors fine tune the nomadic minds of their mentees. Ground them in reality, without discouraging them from making mistakes. They allow them to fail, productively.

With my friend, I remember, I saw a Canadian animated film – Window Horses – about a Chinese Canadian young girl who in her journey to discover Rumi, discovers herself.  With my mentor, I took a Disney Institute Leadership Course, and attended a Serious Games in Education conference, and met for countless coffee-inspired chats. With my self, I let my mind wander. Through them, with my self, I reflexively author.