A roadmap to turn Jordan into imaginary Switzerland

If you spend hours a day online, just like I used to do, your life will be negatively charged and thus you will become infertile to any positive thinking.
It’s hard to maintain your balance these days without drifting for a while but there are several actions that you can take to regain your positive balance. Surely, people comes with different stands, thoughts, ideologies and psyches too. Here I’m sharing my 8 cents to get out of the loop and do something useful away from online flame wars.

1. Stop reading the news unless you are paid to read it or familiar or specialised with the topic and can give your thoughts on it.
And if you are specialised, start an initiative and share your experience.

2. Tweet for fun, not for politics.
Unless you run an influential initiative or a project, like 7iber’s HashTagDebates, Le Café Politique Amman, JordanDays or Inkitab then you got to remember, you are not Socrates and even if you are, Socrates wouldn’t have used Twitter if he’s with us now, not even with a bad wife.

3. If you want to debate a social or political topic, join Jordan Debate Club
Another beautiful initiative, hopefully they will start publishing the debates outputs soon.

4. Use Facebook to share, and only to share what you read, but a quality read.
Social media managed to put me in an inept to write kind of mental state but once I went back to my long queue of books that I have to read, I started consuming my Moleskine notebooks.

5. Quit Le Café Politique – Amman / مقهى عمان السياسي - on Facebook
Though it’s beautiful and a much needed initiative and I surely recommend keeping an eye on their monthly sessions and the coming Political Book Club; but the Facebook group isn’t useful anymore.

6. Dedicated more time to what other people wrote on papers. Aka read a book.
Read a book and share your perspective or write a review. Join Inkitab or read and contribute to خط الزمن الأردني for a change.

7. Contribute back to the community by participating in many of the available volunteering opportunities.
Jordan is blessed with quite impressive number of initiatives, you can start with Ruwwad | رواد التنمية

8. Go for a hike or on a bike over the weekend; or join the FastWalk folks for couple of healthy and ethical walks a month.
Check out Walking Jordan for a fun and friendly hike, or Nader Bikes and enjoy a ride with a professional cyclists.

The minute you decide to lessen your online presence, the minute you will regain the good image of your beloved country and will give you a bigger window to work, contribute and enjoy your life.
You will regain it not for anything but because you started to actually participate and contribute, rather than virtual barking.
Why Switzerland? I have no idea why or how it was planted in our heads whenever we want to compare Jordan to a developed country.
Why Imaginary? Because I don’t imagine people quitting the virtual flame wars and joining other initiatives or starting their own.
If you know any other initiative and would like to include it in this post, write to me at [email protected] or leave a comment here.