Letters From A Change Agent: #findyourlight

Life gets challenging in unique ways when working internationally. You find yourself in a different landscape with different cultural norms, often different languages you may not understand, and different methods to accomplish the same goal. I feel I have become pretty good at rolling with the changes and ambiguity of this work, however, this last month has challenged me in ways I never expected.

I’ve been with a group of university students from New York. We have been volunteering at an orphanage in Northern South Africa. The moment my group first met with the matriarch of the community, we were inspired and moved by her candid approach to the circumstances at the orphanage. The essence of what she said to us was, “Find your light.”

Despite my optimism and constant ability to be patient and open, I tend to lose my light. I lose it in logistics, outcomes, and other people’s needs. I feel this is normal and not negative but since Mgogo (grandma) said this to us, I’ve been unsettled by it. This last month has had me questioning, how can I keep my light all the time? What if our light was constant just like a happy thought in Neverland? So I’ve been trying.

The first weekend here, I got thrown into a situation of selflessness, courage, but mostly need. The community was putting together a funeral for a young mother who lived in the informal village next to the orphanage’s campus. It is tradition for the younger men to be very involved with funerals. Most men my age have passed away from AIDS in this community, so I was needed to be a pallbearer and then assist in burying the coffin. While shoveling dirt in front of family and loved ones, I couldn’t help thinking, “How do I find my light in this?”

Fortunately it has been easy. I find my light in the faces of these children who always have love to give. Despite being refugees, being raped, losing parents to HIV/AIDS, and some being HIV positive themselves, they are always giving love and able to receive it. One woman in my group described these children as, “warriors of battles we will never know.” As I venture into the day care today, I will remember this and hug my heart alive.

I also have been able to find my light in my Peacework participants. These ten courageous young adults have left the comfort of their homes to come volunteer in the most non-traditional of circumstances. They are up at 5am to get 200 children ready for breakfast and school while handling their individual projects, which are more challenging than most jobs they will be offered out of college. Even though they are tired, overworked, often ill and homesick, there are always smiles on their faces.

I believe to make our light the most available, we must better know that human connections are important. We must acknowledge that we are apart of nature and that real human connections are the key to unlocking the light that we already own. The light must be accessed but it is always there. We must train ourselves how to reach it when we need it; Just like a happy thought in Neverland to fly.

How do you access your light? Who helps your light appear immediately? How often do you connect/see/interact with them? Do you make their light appear?

I get reminded all the time that just like food and water, I need interaction with certain people. I try to be conscious of this and work it like a muscle. We must train ourselves on what connections are healthy and assist us in finding our light so it is always available. I don’t think this strategy will change the world, but anything is possible when bettering us on an individual level.

Good luck on finding your light!

The Importance of a Detour

This last week I had planned on making an exciting road trip across country.  If you have been a follower of Project Kinect, then you know I am a huge road trip person.  Ever since I was twenty, I’ve taken one, two or sometimes three big road trips a year.  It is the best way to see our country and leads to spontaneity and experiences that we may have not been exposed to if we were taking a different way of travel.

Well this road trip was going from Wisconsin Dells to Austin, TX and then onto San Antonio through El Paso and then finally to Los Angeles for a few weeks and then back through Colorado.  Even though this was my plan, something much greater than me was saying my plan was wrong.

I should have been more vulnerable to the things happening around me in the days leading up to the trip.  My car is not at the full potential of a car that is going to be driving across country but I didn’t focus on that point. I decided to get fixed only the parts necessary to get from point a to point b.  This would mean taking a trip with no cruise control and not air conditioning; not my one of my best ideas. The finish to admitting that this idea wasn’t a thoroughly planned trip was that as I was leaving my grandmother’s house, my car completely stopped.  I was in reverse when the connection from the battery was interrupted.  I called the mechanic and he rushed over to my assistance.  With no more red flags, I took off for my trip.

I was moving smoothly until I was half way through Iowa.  Just as I was getting into the Des Moines city limits, my car started to lose acceleration.  I was pushing on the gas but the car wasn’t moving any faster.  This was also in the middle of a storm and I figured maybe my car was hydroplaning and I just was over reacting but when my car was dead on the side of the road, I realize that I was under reacting.

I sat there for about three minutes and then began to think of the next thing to do.  I didn’t panic, but I couldn’t think of what I should be doing.  I should have thought to call 911  but that didn’t even come to mind.  Thankfully a man pulled up in his red truck who happened to be a mechanic.  He looked under the hood quickly and then had me try to get the car going but it just wasn’t working.  Then the hail began and he jumped in the car and called 911 for me. With this phone call, he also got the emergency road service dispatched.  A state trooper showed up who then waited until my tow truck arrived.

The storm finally let up and before I knew it, I was in Howard’s tow truck on my way to an area that had a Firestone, Sears and some a selection of hotels to choose from because it was looking like I was staying Des Moines for the night.  Howard was the driver’s name and not the company name.  It’s surprising on how much you can learn about someones life in the span of a twenty-minute drive.

When I got to the mechanic, I then realized how kind and genuine everyone had been. I will always believe in the kindness of people and this experience just re-affirmed it.

The next day I awoke in my Econo-Lodge hotel room, fully slept and ready to take on the world.  The mechanics called to let me know that my car was ready and as I got to my coffee destination with ideas in my head, I sat down to make an alternate plan that wouldn’t leave me in a similar situation of break down.  So, with thought and conversations with parents as well as loved ones that I was going to visit, I made the decision to go up north to my father’s cabin and spend the rest of Memorial Day weekend there.   The detour really came when I found myself at dinner in Minneapolis with old friends. Sitting there in the presence of two of the most phenomenal people I know, mean while making new friends with people who had joined us, I became fully conscious that a plan had come about that was perfect in which I made not one decision.  As dinner was ending, I realized that the main purpose of this trip was to get myself together as well as to connect with close friends going through similar situations.  It wasn’t the friends I originally thought I would see and surely staying the night in a strange city wasn’t the way I thought I would collect myself, but it was exactly what I needed.  As I was going to bed that night in the hotel room, my friend Dina texted me, “it’s all working out in a perfect way!” It really did.

Connecting in Film

We need to have that human connection.  It is at the base of what Project Kinect is here for.  We are creatures that herd and that love we get from one another is as basic a need as food and water.  I wanted to share a couple of films coming out in the near future that are great examples of this need for humans to connect.

The Newest Generation

Last night, while the world was watching the news coverage of Osama bin Laden’s death, I got the luxury of getting away from the television and just visiting with two really close friends of mine.  As we sat there, and I kept having moments of extreme happiness because it was just conversation among friends with a bottle wine, it occured to me that my most fulfilled moments in life are when I am in that zone with loved ones.  Other examples of this would be when I am home for Christmas and the family is all around the table, after dinner, playing games or sitting up late at night while in college on the floor of the hallway, chatting about whatever came to mind with my roommates.  Those moments, the ones where true human connection is happening, are the best moments of my life.

It seems hard today to picture people still able to actually forget about their phones and get caught up in the conversations that they’re having but it still does happen.  People need that human connection and I fear for the younger generation known as the Millennial Generation.  Friends of mine that work on campuses throughout the country have been telling me how college freshman now need to be taught how to hold conversations with each other.  Specific classes are created to not only teach them how to study, research, and be a college student but also how to approach there professors, resolve issues with their roommates and how to get involved on campus by meeting people.  I heard a story about two dorm mates that weren’t getting along and they wouldn’t address each other face to face.  Instead, were facebooking one another and texting, while they were both in the room!  This is where we have gotten to on the college campus.  These young people will be our neighbors, our doctors, our government officials and they aren’t able to hold a simple conversation with the people around them.

I do feel that this isn’t a problem that can’t be fixed; I just worry that we have began tackling it a little late.  The solution I think, just starts with getting involved with this generation’s life while they’re learning what they missed because of technology.  They just need more practice being in conversation and if we enroll them in our conversations, then they will hopefully fall into a trend where they do the same thing.  We may even learn something about them through this.  We don’t know what is going to happen with this Millennial Generation and those to come, but if we are involved in their lives though, then we can at least continue in a forward direction with them, knowing who they are.

If you want to read more about this generation, here is the Wikipedia link.  Since I’ve been on Project Kinect, and have met many different younger college students, I have heard a lot about communism.  Something interesting with this generation is that they don’t have any knowledge of the Cold War, the Berlin Wall falling or the breaking up of the USSR, so communism is a brand new concept to them.  In the Wikipedia link, they mention that.  I just find this interesting, with no significance other than I’m happy that there is still free thought happening in their heads.