Hi All,
I ended my last e-mail with a few questions. The point of it was to highlight that sometimes, we think we understand who we are and can accurately predict how we'd react in situations that have never happened to us before. Here's an example: I used to think that if I ever needed to escape from a burning building, I would quickly grab my old photos and journals before I ran out of the house. But, when there was a fire scare about 3 months back in my apartment building, I quickly woke up (something I never do quickly on a day-to-day basis), told my mom to get our dog and her leash, threw on a summer dress (mind you, it was November and FREEZING, but in my very focused state, I did it because it was the fastest), and sprinted down the stairs with only my coat, dog, and mother in tow.
Luckily, it was just a scare and there was no actual fire. But, the point here is, whenever I imagined this situation in my head, I always figured I would be in a slight panic, but still manage to carry out 20 lbs. worth of old memories. In truth, what the actual experience taught me was that even your old pictures and journals and electronic devices are replaceable and relatively unimportant when your health- and life- are threatened.
No matter how well you think you know yourself, you will almost certainly behave in a different way when you are in a position that requires self-preservation and the security of your most elementary needs (food, water, shelter, physical safety).
This isn't a bad thing- it's a defense mechanism. I think theissue lies in the expectations we carry around with us. Since my original impressions of everyone on the trip were that they were all incredible fun, unique people, I –perhaps prematurely- assumed a trust. But trusting someone to be a fun new buddy and trusting that someone will put you before them when it comes to very basic needs are two completely different things.
On that 5th day of hiking, I learned in a very vivid, challenging, and somewhat scary way that you must take care of you. You can't expect that everyone else will put you before them just because you put other people before yourself. That sounds harsh, and I'm not saying you shouldn't continue to care for other people by any means. It was a particularly hard lesson for me, because in my heart I truly believe that we should always put other people before ourselves. But the truth is, if you are constantly forgoing your own physical and emotional well-being for the sake of someone else's, you aren't going to be the happiest, best version of yourself.
...Of course, there is a balance to be met here...overdoing it one way or the other- being too selfish or too selfless- isn't going to result in your best self. But on a pragmatic level, you've got to take care of you. You cannot help anyone else if you don't do that first.
Life, it seems to me, is timed perfectly. When you are stretching your limits, and you get to that point where you feel like you are about to enter into the "panic zone," relief magically appears.
That might take form in a stressful week at work and school- but all of a sudden, when you feel the work is becoming unbearable, the weekend arrives. Or when you are running a marathon or training for a sport, you feel like your body can't handle the physical stress anymore, and you realize that you are in the last mile or the last few minutes of practice.
My relief came in the form of what Outward Bound calls a "Solo." My solo was 24 delightful, precious, and much-needed hours of alone time. Everyone in my group was sent to a designated solo spot, where we were to find a place to sleep, meditate, survive on very little food (luckily, I had practice with this already, haha), and enjoy some alone time. Before we left, our leader Rolando read us this beautiful piece:
I Want to Know
By: Oriah Mountain Dreamer, Indian Elder
It doesn't interest me what you do for a living-
I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing.
It doesn't interest me how old you are-
I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn't interest me what planets are squaring your moon-
I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrows,
if you have been opened by life's betrayals,
or have become shriveled and closed from the fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own,
without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own-
if you can dance with wildness and let ecstasy fill you to the tips
of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, be realistic,
or to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn't interest me if the story you are telling is true-
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself;
if you can bear the accusation of betrayal to not betray your own soul.
I want to know if you can see the beauty, even when it is not pretty every day-
and if you can source your own life from it's presence.
It doesn't interest me where or what or with whom you have studied-
I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away;
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself…
And if you like the company you keep
in the empty moments.
And with that, I left to spend the next 24 hours with myself and find out, if, with nothing but the river flowing past me and the mountains up above me…if, with nothing but my own thoughts, and hopes, and dreams, and fears…I truly liked the company I kept.
I spent the first few hours setting up my tarp, washing my clothes, sitting on a little rock in the middle of the stream just watching the water pass me and move further and further down the never-ending river. And then I started to write- to really write for the first time in a long time. I sat there thinking and writing, occasionally getting up to stretch or wander. Eleven hours and 86 journal pages later, I fell asleep as the sun began to set, to the lullaby of trickling water and rustling leaves.
When I woke up the next morning, I felt refreshed and alive and relieved. I thought about things I had not thought about in a long time, things that I was intentionally or unintentionally trying to avoid or push away. I wrote about my dreams for the future, and my regrets in the past (we all have them in my opinion. It's not that we shouldn't think about them – it's that we shouldn't live in them); my fears about the people in my life- and the parts of myself- that I was losing; my excitement about the new journey I am on, and the new people I'll get to meet along the way; my hopes for our country, for my family and friends, for my own life. And after my 24 hours, I woke up that morning with my back to the sun, ready to take on the next challenge, and quite frankly, to throw my expectations for almost everything out the window.
...And to answer my own question, I found that I do love the company I keep....
More than I expected to, and that makes me smile. =)
When we got back together as a group, we did this exercise where we all gave each other intangible "gifts". For each person in the group, we had to write: 1.) something we would want to 'give' to them (i.e. something they could use more of on an emotional/personal level), and 2.) something we would want to 'take' from them (i.e. a trait we admired about them).
I got some very interesting, heartfelt gifts from the rest of my group, and it allowed me to reflect about personal strengths and weaknesses. The exercise helped me realize that we are often so caught up in our own perceptions of how other people see us, that we don't always realize they might find strengths or weaknesses in us that we are completely oblivious to. It was an eye-opening experience. If you have the opportunity to ask people in the future candidly about your strengths and weaknesses, I hope you take it.
During the final week of the trip, we lived in a local village called Cuyin Manzano. During my time there, I got to meet lots of local people who taught me how to make homemade pan, how to weave (I made my own scarf!), and the beauty of living simply. One of the big problems the group had during the second week was that there was relative dissatisfaction with the service projects we were assigned to do. We thought that we would be doing subsistence farming, but instead, winded up building fences and painting walls in the local community center. It's not that the work was unimportant- it's just that many came in with the perception that we would be working side-by-side with community members who really needed our help with sustainable development.
But thinking back on that week objectively, it's a little bit absurd that there was disappointment in our service activities. After all, the purest meaning of "service" is being helpful without any expectation or desire for a personal gain in return. Most people do get a gain from service, and it is often that personal happiness they feel from helping others, or the satisfaction of feeling like a "good" person for having helped someone else. But true service is doing something for others even if it doesn't leave you feeling like you've just changed someone's entire life. Serving isn't about getting something in return- it's about doing something selflessly to make the lives of others better/ easier.
One of the most memorable and beautiful moments of the trip for me was a night hike we did up a steep mountain at the end of the second week of our trip. When we finally got to the top just as the sun set completely, everyone was looking for a place to sleep. It was incredibly windy on the top of this mountain, so everyone decided to sleep together to stay warm, but after a long few weeks, I needed some alone time (this is what happens when you grow up as an only child...space is precious and necessary!).
I stumbled upon a cavern in a huge rock and slept there by myself. I fell asleep that night smiling at the beautifully bright full moon, listening to the song of the wind swirling around me. It wasn't until the next morning when the sun came up that I got a good look at the spot where I had been sleeping. I have no idea how I found it in the complete dark- it was almost as if the spot had been carved out just for that moment, like it knew I was coming (see Facebook pics for a visual). =)
As everyone woke up saying they were tired and cold (it was really cold), I was enamored by a sense of complete peace. And in that moment I realized that we are often too busy trying to create our own forms of comfort (huddling together to stay warm), that we miss out on the blanket nature has provided for us (the cavern).
Lesson learned: nature is stronger than we as individuals will ever be;
we become stronger only when we learn to be part of it rather than resist it. I mean this in a metaphorical sense as well...living simply and applying the lessons that nature so readily teaches us to our own lives (see end for examples).
Our trip ended with a big feast called an asado, where a goat is killed and cooked over a huge hearth fire. It sounds brutal, I know, but it kind of put me in touch and helped me to be more appreciative of the food I eat. When we pick up steak from the grocery store, we rarely think about the animal. When we buy lettuce, we rarely think about the sweat and toil of the farmers who grow the foods that sustain us. Seeing the gardens and animals with my own eyes really put me in touch with the blessing of food, and the very sad degree to which many people take food for granted in the United States.
...The ending to this trip may seem a little lackluster. And I guess in a weird way, it kind of was- at least in relation to my expectations of what this trip was going to be like for me. I think we all go into experiences with a certain set of ideas about what will happen and how we will be transformed by what we go through. Several of my friends who went on Outward Bound trips said it was life changing and positive. So naturally, I expected a certain degree of self-transformation to occur.
But the lessons I learned about myself, nature, and other people were far from expected. It's like going into something with a set of questions that you are looking for answers to, and coming out with answers to questions you didn't even know you had instead.
Many of the lessons I left with are deeply personal, so I won't go into detail here because trying to write about them in a few paragraphs in an e-mail would diminish them; sometimes, there just aren't enough- or the right- words. But I will say one of the biggest realizations I had was that it's easy to have questions and automatically think that we need to search for the answers. But the answers are right in front of us, all around us, always. All you have to do is live life with your eyes, and arms, and mind, and heart wide open- you'd be shocked by how the answers just naturally come to you and embrace your life when you do.
During each night of the trip, someone would read a quote out of this book we had. It was a way of reflecting on the journey. On the last night, it was my turn to read one. Here's what I chose:
http://www.kalimunro.com/learned_in_kindergarten.html
(you have to read this quote for the last part of this e-mail to be fully relevant).
…After I read it, I shared my own little follow-up to this quote that I had written the night before, and it is perhaps the best way to summarize the experience:
"Robert Fulghum said that all he ever needed to know about life,
he learned in kindergarten.
I say everything we really need to know can be learned in Patagonia.
I've learned that the shortest way isn't always the fastest way,
and the fastest way isn't always the best way.
I've learned that it's important to think about
the paths others have taken before you,
but that even the most clearly marked path
may not necessarily take you to where you want to go.
The downward slide can be more painful than the uphill climb.
You don't have to speak a different language to misunderstand someone.
But you can also understand someone perfectly without exchanging a single word.
Drink a lot of water.
Exercise often.
And get 8 hours of sleep a night. Seriously.
Care for the earth, because it's your home.
Take time to grow.
I've learned that the strongest leader is often
the one willing to be at the very back of the line.
You don't always know the weight other people are carrying on their shoulders,
so be gentle…be patient.
You can't find your way if you are constantly looking down-
keeping your head up will help you find your way.
Never let the fear of falling keep you from moving forward.
The thorns along the way, painful as they are,
help you to appreciate the destination that much more.
When it gets dark, it's best to stick together.
And sometimes,
the only way to overcome the feeling of loneliness
is to spend more time alone.
As dark as things may get, the sun will always come again.
Showers are precious!
But the dirtier you get, the more you come clean.
And,
like the stars are a constant blanket protecting the earth,
your soul is a constant blanket protecting your life.
For while Patagonia may provide you with many of the answers
you need about life and how to live,
you will always carry within you
all of the answers you'll ever need to know,
to grow."
To all the people who have taken the time to read this, I hope-
whether you are in a big city at a corporate job,
studying away on a little hill in the center of New York State,
or taking your own little adventure around the world-
that you are enjoying your own journey and not taking a minute of this life for granted.
Celebrate the best of your life, and know that whatever questions you may have right now...
you have within you the answers to them, too.
Love always,
Melissa
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