“Where are you from?”

“Lebanon. You know anything about Lebanon?”

“No.”

“You know much about the middle east?”

“Not really.”

“Well Lebanon is a really interesting country. It’s a very ancient civilization with lots of culture. It’s right above Israel by the Mediterranean sea so it’s always been a big stopping point on trade routes. I was born there and for the first 10 years of my life the country was at war. That was the last part of a 30 year war that was going on there. Now it’s divided into 16 different sects so there’s a lot of cultural variety within the country. Because of all that tension for so long people have a very joie de vivre attitude because they want to have as much fun as they can while they can.”

“So how’d you end up in San Francisco?”

“Well I always wanted to experience the American Dream, and was in a management consulting job at the time so I applied to Stanford and Harvard. I got in both places and ended up choosing Harvard because it seemed so prestigious. When I was out clubbing with my friends one night I looked around at them and realized I had decided to go to Harvard to impress my friends, so I called Stanford back and told them I had had a change of heart and still wanted to come. Of course they loved that, winning someone away from Harvard, so they said yes.”

“And how do you like living here?”

“It was really hard at first, I didn’t like it at all. I couldn’t understand the culture, and I had a really hard time figuring out how to get around. But then, I started to focus more on myself and figure out what my passions were. As I did I started to find more people that I felt like were on the same wavelength. 

On my journey of self exploration, I started Pause & Shine, a series of workshops based on meditation and sharing, to help more people start uncovering and living their passions. We also feature different people who are living their dreams in our blog Passion Stories.”

“That sounds awesome. You do that full time?”

“No, I have a day job. It’s not about trying to quit everything you know in your life and completely start something new. It’s about living incrementally.”