< Previoussure that I left a global legacy behind. All that was gone, and I had to make peace with it. A few days before the university term was meant to start, I was sitting with my friends from debate class before we (they) would journey off into the world. I told them what was going on, explained that we all live in different economic realities, I had accepted mine and that was that. I expected them to feel sorry for me, hug me, cry - but no! They went silent for a few seconds and then they all started laughing. They knew me and they knew that there was no way I was going to give up. My debate partner passed me a beer and said something like this:This time, I was especially annoyed by these remarks because I had no cards to play. I was stuck and it’s not like I could just walk up to a person and ask for money to go to school, or could I? In the end, that’s exactly what I did!I managed to stop feeling sorry for myself, channeled my inspiration and dedication, and stepped up. I was not going to let poverty prosper! I took a bus to the capital, determined to go and talk to the biggest legal insurance company in the country and convince them to pay for my first year to study law at a local university. They initially told me no, so I pushed and pushed. I had nothing to lose and everything to gain. In the end, they ended up paying for my first year of varsity.“I have never met a person who has such a personal relationship with poverty. You have looked poverty straight in the eyes and told her that she was not keeping you in her circle. You have wined and dined with poverty in the shanty town of Okandjengedi. For as long as I have known you, you have never settled for any less than you deserved. You are Gawie Kanjemba, the universe will align itself to make sure you are fine, and if it doesn’t, you will make it align itself.”From there I was catapulted into a journey that tested my endurance, humanity, and persistence. Many challenges with serious moral and economic implications were thrown my way. I was responsible to follow my dream and to ensure that those who had sacrificed a lot for me to be at school did not do it in vain.This is not meant to be a story about how wonderful I am, but one that aims to demonstrate that through hard work and persistence, you can reach your goals.Throughout my struggles I have met many kind people who were willing to extend a helping hand, ensuring that I reach my life goals and aspirations. My end goal is to sit at “the high table” where decisions are made. I am motivated by power, knowledge, and influence so that I am able to design, engineer, and direct the course of development for my people. Today, as I sit on the Champs-Élysées, eating croissants and drinking French wine, I reflect back to the boy who was not able to afford higher education. No matter what you are going through, it is important to take a step back, climb out of the hole of victimhood and ask yourself how you could do better, how you could elevate yourself. I have taken this philosophy and applied it throughout my life. As a black person from a poor background in a society that looks down on me, I hope to influence other people in similar situations, particularly in Africa. I want us all to drop the victim mentality and take charge of our own destiny to do the best! Gawie Kanjemba is a Namibian Lawyer who is currently doing an MSc in International Energy (Project Management & Emerging Economies) at Sciences Po – Paris. He is an author of a book titled “Bringing Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights Home”, a scholar of the International Law Association, and an Alumni of the Stanford University and Peking University U.S-China Exchange.He is an award winning international orator, and has spoken on various international platforms such as the Paris Peace Forum, alongside U.S Supreme Court Justice, Judge Stephen Breyer. linkedin.com/in/gawie-kanjemba-074413b/GAWIE KANJEMBAEVEN WHEN YOU THINK YOU CAN’T, YOU NEED TO DIG DEEP, STEP UP AND DO BETTERSEEMY RAQQAby Lamis AljasemRaqqa, in the Syrian context, was one of many marginalized cities. It was rarely mentioned on the Syrian official television channel, neither did it appear on the weather forecast. It was disappointing to see the weather map changing every five years, according to the latest studio set renovation, yet never seeing Raqqa on the map. Today, ironically, my hometown is well-known. Although I can think of million ways in which Raqqa could have been known to the world other than the way it is known now. The so-called Islamic State invaded Raqqa, turning it into its capital and a theatre of atrocities. People everywhere could only link Raqqa to brutality. Suddenly and unfairly, Raqqa acquired an image that has nothing to do with its real self or with the very people who call it home.Of all the losses that the citizens of Raqqa experienced with ISIS, we had to also lose the identity and the image of our hometown. This was most difficult for the civilians who stayed behind. In the end, the civilians of Raqqa lost everything to the battle which defeated ISIS in 2017. One afternoon in October 2017, I received a video showing what used to be my house. We used to live on the third floor in that building. The video showed only one room left on the first floor. Everything else was gone and instead of our building you could see the blue sky. I kept replaying the video over and over refusing to believe that it was real. I still think of my house and my time in Raqqa every day. Trying to analyze what happened has been overwhelming, I found I didn’t get the chance to say goodbye. The Raqqa I know doesn’t exist anymore. I have lost my home, my past and most of the people who were part of it. This is the case for thousands in Raqqa. We need to give ourselves time to grieve, for as long as that might take.All I have left are memories of Raqqa and what it could have been. This experience led me to set up See My Raqqa. A collection of pictures and videos from pre-war Raqqa. I wanted to introduce my city to the world in its original state, as I knew it and to keep the memory of the city alive for myself and others to rejoice in.Born and raised in Raqqa, Syria - my hometown -, in my mind, is a place of first memories, predominantly beautiful ones. First steps, first achievements, first performances at school, first dreams about the world and many more memories that have become even more precious after the war in Syria. by Lamis AljasemTHE RAQQA I KNOW DOESN’T EXIST ANYMORE.When recently asked about the one lesson I had learned from this experience of loss, my answer was not to collect anything. By this I mean no souvenirs, no cards and no books. However, I said this in desperation after losing all of by belongings back home. I realized soon after that the only thing that restored my hope and saved me emotionally was a collection of pictures and souvenirs of my hometown.Developing the See My Raqqa project involved searching for and going through many old pictures of my city. This was bittersweet; while I knew the city had been destroyed, it also gave me the unique opportunity to connect and bond with many strangers over a shared and very poignant experience. In the middle of collecting images for See My Raqqa, I would often wonder who the people in these photos were. Who were they? What were their passions? Are they still alive? The project ended up being a place where people could share stories, reminisce and process the grief they had experienced. It started to become a place of inspiration. DOESN’T EXIST ANYMORE.Lamis Aljasem was born in Raqqa, Syria. She graduated from Damascus University with a Bachelor of Information (Media). Before Leaving Syria in 2013, she co-founded the Syrian Female Journalists Network, the first network to raise gender equality awareness among Syrian journalists. In 2016, Lamis earned a master’s degree in Global Communications from the American University of Paris. In 2017, Lamis founded See My Raqqa, an online project to reintroduce the city of Raqqa to the world. Right now, Lamis is completing a master’s degree at Sciences PO Paris. instagram.com/seemyraqqafacebook.com/SeeMyRaqqatwitter.com/seemyraqqaSee My Raqqa is a means to inspire conversations among my fellow Raqqa residents’ past and present. To inspire what we can build, and about how this time, we must have a say in writing the next chapter of our history. See My Raqqa includes the voices and dreams of those who stayed behind. Because if they – those who suffered and survived under ISIS – are not part of the future of Raqqa, who will be? LAMIS ALJASEMLEVELING OUTby Tom EwingI’ve stopped taking them because I am pretending to myself that my incompetence - I’ve lost a packet - was deliberate, as I need to come off them anyway, a slow and tiresome process known as “tapering off”. Of course, the whole point of tapering off is that you don’t just stop taking the tablets and let your brain and body crash. But somewhere inside me there’s a small voice like an inner Jacob Rees-Mogg, saying “Let it all burn. Don’t listen to the experts. Just come off them. Tough it out. Take the pain.” Maybe we all have that voice. But maybe we don’t, and maybe some of us need medicine to shut it up. This is one of the problems with “talking about mental illness”, something we are all meant to be getting better at. The experience of it is radically subjective. It’s often remarked that mental illness is an invisible illness: you can see if someone has a leg in a cast, but you can’t see their depression. Less mentioned is that this is a double jeopardy. If your leg is in a cast you can see all the people walking around cast-free, and you know exactly how and what is different for you. But if you’reI’ve been off my pills for three days and I am, in medical parlance, a right grumpy bastard. mentally ill and your brain is telling you strange things, it can be incredibly tough to work out which of them are your illness, and which are stuff everyone is dealing with. Especially as often it’s your way of coping with that stuff – or not coping - that forms the slime trail of illness.Not coping is how I got here. I was working on polling the last US election – we all know how that went. Looking at the weekly polls, tracking the news obsessively, realizing that the worst might happen – then that it really might. This election was a still-exploding detonation of rage whose fallout was more madness: stress, anxiety, depression. In New York, therapistsyndrome. I had it: a week before theING election, I went to my GP and asked for anxiety meds. Three days before, I started taking them. I was lucky – they worked.But there I was, prescription in hand, one of the mentally ill again. Does talking about it help? Sometimes. Maybe. We are being encouraged to talk about mental illness in the workplace, but it’s a very abstract sort of a conversation on the whole.Often, it involves people reassuring each other that they know how to be kind. When it does include people with mental illness, we’re encouraged to present their stories as nuggets of off-the-peg struggle and bravery. It does do some good. Gradually, progress is made. There is more understanding. mentally ill and your brain is telling you strange things, it can be incredibly tough to work out which of them are your illness, and which are stuff everyone is dealing with. Especially as often it’s your way of coping with that stuff – or not coping - that forms the slime trail of illness.Not coping is how I got here. I was working on polling the last US election – we all know how that went. Looking at the weekly polls, tracking the news obsessively, realizing that the worst might happen – then that it really might. This election was a still-exploding detonation of rage whose fallout was more madness: stress, anxiety, depression. In New York, therapists identified it as a new syndrome. I had it: a week before theBut honestly, understanding isn’t my top priority. It’s nice, but it’s not what I want. I want to get up in the morning and be able to get stuff done, and I take medicine to help make sure I can. Living with anxiety and depression is not a ‘battle’; it’s not a thing you ‘overcome’. Often it’s a tedious process of understanding your situation and mimimising risks. You get to know, as best you can, what triggers it; know the warning signs; know the behavior that puts you in a worse place; manage those as best you can. It’s probably more like navigating a wretched commute into the office than some kind of heroic struggle. Most days there’s a five minute delay. Some days every train has been wrecked and every driver kicks you out the cab. I did warn you I’m a grumpy bastard.My goal isn’t leveling up, it’s leveling out – being able to predict how you’ll be on a given day. Being reliable – including to yourself. If we don’t see mental illness as a battle, what might we see it as? A series of practicalities, maybe. Accessibility issues, like making sure your office has lifts as well as stairs, or your website isn’t full of strobing colors or yellow-on-white text.Don’t make anxious people do trust exercises in team building. Don’t make dysmorphic people represent themselves with a HD photo. Don’t raise your eyebrows at people who aren’t drinking. Don’t take stressed behavior personally. For God’s sake don’t yell at people. It’s difficult and unrewarding, this pragmatic kind of empathy, but then so is the illness it’s accommodating. And there are trade-offs: positives to be taken. MY GOAL ISN’T TOM EWINGTom works in an innovation and consultancy role as well as leading the experimental System1 Politics team. He is also the Group’s most prolific writer, handling white papers, articles, blog posts, and more. A popular conference speaker, he’s won awards from ESOMAR, the MRS and the AMA, and has also written about pop music for The Guardian, the Village Voice, and others.tomewing.comMy experience of illness has – I hope – made me a little kinder personally. A better listener and more self-aware. It’s made me more aware of the armory of privilege I do have access to. It can also do wonders for one’s perspective – you can spot platitudes and well-meant bullshit a mile off, which has one or two uses in a business context.And also – people are getting sicker. I’m in a good position, economically. Plenty aren’t. Poverty and precarity are sources of continuous, debilitating stress. Whether the people suffering from it name it as mental illness or not is up to them, really. To look at the people around you and chatter excitedly about disruption seems like a catastrophic failure of empathy. But so is to look at them and frame their everyday getting by as a triumph. Tapering off isn’t a triumph, either. It’s a stage, a slow diver-like ascent which holds within it the promise of the next descent. I’ve done it before. The black dog – Churchill’s name for his depression – trots off, unbothered. It’ll be back, maybe in two years, maybe in ten. Both of us know it.. Like I say, I’m lucky – my black dog is happy to just sit on my lap and pant, until I heave it off.It doesn’t go for the throat.MY GOAL ISN’T LEVELING UPIT’S LEVELING OUTNext >