“I want to guide people in the right direction. I want to give them confidence, so they know what they want in their life”

Text and photo by Emma E. Petersen

Mathilde is a young woman who recently decided to move to Iceland from the southern part of France. The first time Mathilde ever got the opportunity to explore Iceland was when she visited for a brief trip in November. During this time, she met some people that had made a big impression on her, which is why she decided to move to Iceland.
Mathilde had always dreamed of becoming a primary school teacher, up until she completed her Bachelor’s degree in that field. While completing her Bachelor’s, she figured that her passion was to give the future children confidence in themselves in order for them to be successful in life. Unfortunately, she realized that this wasn’t really possible in the French school system. She needed time to reflect, so she decided that she wanted to take a year off before starting her Master’s program. She decided that she wanted to travel and understand her inner-self, while reflecting on her own ambitions in life.

”I want to guide people in the right direction. I want to give them confidence, so they know what they want in their life. I have always had the believe, that sport and creativity can be a guideline for children to express themselves and explore some aspects that books and academic knowledge can’t give them.”

‘Creativity is the absence of fear’, Mathilde believes that it is a big mistake to hide creativity in the school system, since this is what helps people express and explore things about themselves and their surroundings. She believes that this is a crucial part while guiding one in the right direction.

“My mother was raised up in a way, where she was never asked about what she would like to do with her life. Therefore she has always been doing something because other people told her to do so. Now she is 58 years old and she doesn’t like her job, but the biggest problem is that she doesn’t know what she likes, because during her entire life other people made a decision on behalf of her, so she never got the opportunity to ask herself the question what she really wanted to do with her life. But she is not to blame, because she was raised that way. Her childhood and the religion forced her into that direction.”

Mathilde thinks that it is important that people learn to know themselves well enough in order to figure out what they would like to pursue and be good at instead of just following a path that society expects. She thinks it is important for people to be guided in the right direction both for the individual themselves as well as for the future community.
In order to inspire and help other people to find their way in life, she is about to start a project called ‘Life and Exploration’. Life and Exploration is supposed to be a foundation that can help other people financially in order to start their own projects primarily inspired by sports or art.