My name is Mushamir. Some people call me Amir, or Mir, which I tend to fondly remember it as the word “Peace” in Russian. I am a writer for the One Young World Youth IMPACT Report. Our team consists of the fabled trio – Michael Teoh, youth evangelist and winner of the OYW Conference the previous year, Jonathan Chu, editor-in-chief who, along with Bernie, the designer, made possible the extraordinary Youth Report 2010, where world-changing and influential characters had received this report that compiled Malaysian Youths thoughts and what matters most to them.
The second edition of this extra-ordinary report, to enhance and surpass the first report, will compile major youth figures in Malaysia, their projects, and a roll-call of the 100 most impact-ful youth projects here, today and tomorrow, for youths, by the youths.
But challenges do face us, and I shall speak from my side.
I will begin first by reading what I have read before, a passage from the book “A Warrior of Light” by the author of The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho;
Sometimes the Warrior feels as if he were leading two lives at once.
In one of them he is obliged to do all the things he does not want to do and to fight for ideas in which he does not believe. But there is another life, and he discovers it in his dreams, in his reading, and in his encounters with people who share his ideas.
The Warrior allows his two lives to draw near. “There is a bridge that links what I do with what I would like to do,” he thinks. Slowly, his dreams take over his everyday life, and then he realises that he is ready for the thing he always wanted.
Then all that is needed is a little daring, and his two lives become one.
(Warrior of the Light, Paolo Coelho, pg. 90)
This passage precisely reflects my daily life back then, and what I thought was a lie of a life. As a youth who had just graduated from International School of Kuala Lumpur to Nottingham University, it was a radical change, as with all of us when we have to move. Assignments, exams, managing my own study and leisure time, managing my own life without parents or teachers – it all bombarded on me.
But I learnt how to be more responsible, and more controlling of my time – time management. No one can successfully balance their busy lives if their time management is bad and if their priorities are not straightened out. Of course I have not yet fully mastered this practice, but being in the OYW Team, it has made me learn out more than I could ever imagine.
Right now we are trying hard to get selected youth respondents to answer to our questionnaires and other questions so that we can start writing articles about them and their projects, as well as compiling all their youth projects that they are currently, or has, gone through.
I wish the best of luck for us OYW Youth IMPACT Report in getting this through successfully, to get Malaysia, and her people, to the forefront of knowledge and to serve as a catalyst for a positive change
