Blog Archive

Topic: Personal Safety

On health and wellness day, two of the many guest speakers were Darren Laur and his wife, Beth Laur. Darren is a police officer for the Victoria Police, and also teaches classes on personal and internet safety. They travel around to various schools and work places teaching classes on how to avoid dangerous situations. The vision of Darren and Beth is to "promote awareness and safety and to excel in everything we do as a company." They have both written many books on personal safety such as: Enlighten Not Frighten, Total Awareness: A Woman’s Safety Book, and Internet Safety 101. These two people are making a huge difference around British Columbia among youths and adults. Darren talked about what to do if you ever get in a situation where you are being threatened, or someone is trying to get something from you. Some things that people do unconsciously that make them more vulnerable victims are: walking with your head down, losing eye contact with people who approach you, listening to music and reading or texting while walking. Strategies to ensure that you won't be a victim could be walking confidently with your head up, checking your surroundings constantly making brief eye contact with everyone, stop and lean against a building if you have to text, and listening to your music with only one headphone in. Many of the reasons that some people become victims of harsh crimes are because they are too embarrassed to do what they are suppose to. A tip that Darren gave us was that if you are wearing a long skirt, or long jacket and are being threatened then lift it up high and run, many people don’t do that because they are too embarrassed. Listening to this speaker helped many of us to consider our actions so that we don't become the future victims of street crimes.

Meghan B., grade 12, Strathcona House

Wellness is a relatively new term and indicates a blend of the physical, the emotional, the spiritual and the mental to produce a stability in our lives that helps us to be positive and productive. The day that we had yesterday where we celebrated health and wellness through a variety of presentations, workshops and addresses, underlined how much there is to learn as we seek our own approaches to life. It is uplifting for me when I am reminded of how little I know and, far from getting me down, it inspires  me to pursue more and more knowledge and thought. Surely that is good for us in itself, exercising some of the unending and limitless possibilities of that mass of electrical and chemical interactions that occupies our cerebral cortex. The brain is the real key to wellness.

Most people style themselves as "lifelong learners" and that is promising for society as a whole as long as we keep promoting the value of learning. I see life as one giant menu of sorts, full of choices about what we feel like and what would be good for us, what we'd enjoy etc.The trick is to have as many choices as possible and to be armed with as much knowledge as possible that will help us to make choices that end up being right for us or good for us, or, ideally, both! Perhaps I could finish Descartes' famous sentence for him : " I think therefore I am well"!