Unity In Diversity — How Illumination Is A Living, Breathing Example Of The Great Mahatma Gandhi

India’s liberator from the British colonial rule is none other than a person even today’s generation Z is familiar with.

I joined Medium on May 29, 2020. I am about 12 days away from celebrating my first month.

The first 15 days was a road to discovery. I had to peruse through many publications; I read hundreds of articles; and I discovered Unsplash!

In those first 15 days, I published 6 articles which was my first goal - to submit at least 3 articles per week. I wrote what came to mind. I was sort of feeling the pulse of Medium’s readers as well as my mine.

From the numerous ‘how to’ articles on succeeding in this platform, I knew I had to get my articles in established publications. However, reading the diverse advise from Medium writers, I had to be head-strong otherwise I could have gotten more confused than when I started looking for answers.

And then I came across Chris Hedges’ ‘8 Illumination Must Reads’, shown below:

I read 5 of Chris’ suggested articles. The best one for me was Alamiin S.I ‘What Great Writers and Conversationalists Have in Common’:

What struck me in this piece is the title itself. Being a public speaker more than a writer, I always consider myself ‘at home’ speaking rather than writing. So Alamin S.I caught my attention and tickled my fancy — so I could be a good writer too after all.

He started his narrative with “reading a piece always feels like listening to something from someone really interesting.”

That introduction hit the nail right in my head! It would be good for Alamin S.I to know that he is one among a few personalities in Medium and Illumination that inspired me to write as if I was just giving one of my usual talks. In truth, excellent advise.

Now back to Chris Hedges. Chris was the first editor of Illumination to comment on my first article in the publication. Chris’ own words were “I can so relate with your story Vic”. With your indulgence, here is that story:

Chris was about 10 years old when this relatable story happened.

A big storm was brewing, bringing with it heavy rains, causing flooding to the the entire neighborhood. They had no choice but to start running/wading/swimming for their lives.

Upon instructions from Chris’ dad, Chris released the poor dog to the water and very swiftly the dog got carried away by the strong current, until it finally drowned to it’s death.

Chris saw his dog literally drown to his death, unable to do anything to save it.

The above inter actions with Chris and Alamin happened on the same day I submitted my first article to Illumination.

Two very different emotional inter actions. Two very engaging emotions I experienced that day.

I have read some articles about why I should not write for Illumination because it is so diverse! That is the reason I started this article with a quotation from one of the greatest human beings who lived in this century, Mahatma Ghandi, the liberator of the Indian people from British colonial rule:

Our ability to reach unity in diversity will be the beauty and the test of our civilisation

Hooray for Illumination!