One of countless reasons I love Model UN is that I get to meet so many inspirational individuals around the world. MUN conferences make their influence available, tangible and relevant—to our lives, successes and dreams.
These individuals don’t leave you without leaving their marks. Their words form a place in your heart and demand a stay. They cannot help but inspire; empower; propel. They stay with you as you leave the conference. They require to be remembered.
When we run into individuals like these, we are compelled not to let them go. We stay in touch. We listen. We respond. We relate. It becomes part of our network, often far beyond what a word network can describe—your bigger self, someone who you aspire to be, a friend, your fan, your family.
So we make a conscious choice to follow their footsteps. In how we speak, act, think, lead and live, we choose to be more like them: charismatic, compelling, passionate, radiant, instinctive and genuine.
Though our passion often takes a different shape than theirs, we nonetheless attribute our reason to find our passion in the first place to their irresistible characters and their remarkable influence.
We carry on. We stay with their tune. It’s not too hard to remember their influence because they have simply become too relevant to our dreams. We slowly change our old, bad habits. We adopt new ones. We speak differently. We behave differently. We feel differently. We act on something we never even gave a thought to before.
This growth pays off. At our next MUN conference, we realize that we may have just become who they were to us. We find out that we have influenced others to emulate the way we are: the way we lead, speak, present, listen and respond. We have inspired someone.
We left a message. We changed something. We did something. We made a difference.
The same story goes on. You’ve helped someone shape her passion, see a future and have guts to follow through her dreams. That someone will grow into yet another individual who will inspire a thousand more.
And I know even as I write this, this same story is taking its rightful place in someone’s heart. This is only one of many ways MUN changes the world: inspiring generation after another.
Throughout reading these interviews, I hope you get to see that powerful chain effect. (I called this a chain effect, not a domino; because using the word domino effect will imply that an individual is falling after the predecessor’s fall. I use chain effect to implicate the connection between these individuals. A may inspire B; they are directly connected. B may inspire C; they are directly connected. A and C are connected, even though indirectly. The chain serves as a better analogy.)
I hope you get to see that MUN community is made up of individuals of pure passion, people of killer good hearts and irresistible sense of selves. And I hope through meeting them through the articles, you get to participate in at least one MUN around you, just to see if my point is in fact truthful and valid.
And I hope you do; so the next person I write about with passion can be you.
