The Next Four Weeks

The Westgate Mall shooting delayed my trip to Kenya six weeks for security reasons. A terrible thing happened in the capital and I can’t help thinking:

“I just want to start my awesome Peace Corps adventure now!”

But I’m so thankful to have friends who give me reality checks. Some say:

“Everything happens for a reason.” While others say:

“You can still have meaningful experiences here before Kenya.”

They both hold some truth, but what are those meaningful experiences? I’ve already put my head in the Peace Corps game and now I need a new game plan for the next few weeks. How can I hope for meaning when I feel like I’m in limbo?

A friend sent me an article about meaning and happiness. Meaning and happiness seem exclusive from one another, but at the same time affect each other. For example, I’ve a lot of eggs in this Peace Corps basket. I want this experience to develop a lot of meaning in my life to the point where I feel comfortable seeking out experiences that make me happy.

This thinking may seem too linear and there’s obviously some overlap between meaning and happiness, but overall I see meaning as a requirement to finding happiness because having experiences that have meaning, like public service jobs, define who we are. Once we are defined, we’re able to stand on our own two feet, to make sound decisions by weighing the pros and cons, to practice empathy, and to know when to listen and when to talk.

How can we find happiness and do the things we really want if we don’t even know who we are first?

How can we seek out happiness if we first don’t know our own abilities and limits?

These meaningful experiences test our boundaries and let us know how well we function in different situations. And once we establish those boundaries, then we are able to stretch those boundaries with things that make us happy. We test our resiliency and expand our perspectives in hopes of widening those boundaries. We can’t test the strength of our resiliency if we’ve yet to establish the boundaries first.

So perhaps this waiting period is yet another meaningful link in the chain that defines who I am. Waiting requires flexibility and resilience. And if I want to widen my boundaries with things that make my happy as I hope to do, I have to practice these skills now. So yes, I can acknowledge that I’m impatient with the wait, but I also have to practice against the urge.

Supporting Unconditionally

Parents may love unconditionally, but that’s not the same as supporting unconditionally.

It was difficult to get my parents to understand my decision to serve in the Peace Corps. I was actually surprised when they asked me not to do it at first. They had always been on my side, cheering me on. But suddenly, they weren’t. It reminded me of that scene in the movie 10 Things I Hate About You where Mr. Stratford struggles with accepting his daughter’s college choice. Mr. Stratford says to his daughter, Kat:

“Fathers don't like to admit it when their daughters are capable of running their own lives. It means we've become spectators. [Your sister] still lets me play a few innings. You've had me on the bench for years. When you go to [college], I won't even be able to watch the game.” 

Maybe my parents just want to be part of the game. And when I’m in Kenya, they won’t even be able to watch the game. It’s hard to choose what I want when I know my parents may not approve. Yet they still love me.

Once the initial stage of apprehension wore off, my parents transformed into the rooting cheerleaders I remember them to be. They want to be a part of my life whether or not they agree with what they see. I always assumed it was an arduous and dreadful process to forgo personal expectations for the sake of maintaining good relationships, but they’ve showed that it is possible. It’s true they may not support all my decisions. Instead, they support me. So I just wanted to say thanks to my Mom and Dad, the heroes in my life. 

Thanks.

Mental Beasts

I will work at my current job tutoring autistic children for one more month. Although I am very excited to end this chapter of my life, some part of me doesn’t want to leave the job until I’ve transformed into some sort of mental beast. What I’ve learned from tutoring autistic children:

• I am no longer fazed by a crying child
• I’m pretty adept at figuring out why a child is crying (i.e. for attention or to escape a task) 
• Learning how to organize the world of chaos, according to a child, and figuring out what needs to be done, has helped organize my less chaotic life in more meaningful ways 

I used to think children were the scariest kinds of people because they often act on their instincts and sometimes act aggressively when an effective form of communication has not presented itself in times of deep emotion. We are taught to deal with our frustration and anxiety by using our words to express how we feel. Children are still learning how to do this and are, therefore, more prone to reacting physically to their emotions. Learning to interpret physical action as a cry for help or for something else proved challenging my first months on the job. But it did get easier as I learned to understand emotions in terms of pictures, rather than words. Then it was easier to respond to the children once I understood what they were trying to express in their own way.

I would imagine that mental beasts break communication barriers and easily find an access point to channel both what the person is trying to convey and what the mental beast chooses to respond. Though I haven’t yet donned the coveted role of mental beast, I do respond less negatively in times of crisis. But I wonder how much better I’d understand children that have an everyday struggle with expressing themselves if I stayed longer.

Regardless, maybe it’s time for a new struggle. Maybe moving to Kenya will provide me with another awesome opportunity to accept different forms of communication and learn to communicate in response.

Starting Over

I am so excited to start this adventure in Kenya. I want to dive right in. It’s a chance to start over. Many people like the idea of starting over. It’s a chance to redefine who you are and to allow people to define you based on what you choose to convey.

But the downside to the novelty of starting over is chronic dissatisfaction. My biggest fear is getting bored with my job and wanting to escape it. While I think dissatisfaction can be completely normal, chronic dissatisfaction and wanting to escape, instead of fixing the problem, is not.

If the thing to which we’ve committed is not the right fit, that’s one thing. But if we foster this “more, more, more” mentality to infect everyday life, we’d be allowing the loss of novelty to justify our moving on.

So how can I limit my exposure to this disease in Kenya? How can I decrease the probability of burn out when all I want is a different adventure? A friend suggested that every project completed should be celebrated in a big way. Celebrate its success and finality. Basically, she’s saying I should celebrate life, a skill I’ve yet to perfect.

I believe the reward for hard work is more work. But I’ve yet to learn how to do that without experiencing burn out. I fear that more than I fear the unexpected from living in a foreign land. Learning how to incorporate the “more, more, more” curiosity and seeing novelty in perspective rather than in things or places will be my biggest adventure yet.

Three More Months

I have three more months until I leave for Kenya. I’m trying not to get too excited. Sometimes I daydream about potential adventures and notice I’ve already wasted 20 minutes of the day. I have to remember to keep my excitement at bay. Words to live by when faced with new prospects:

It’s a marathon, not a sprint.

If I expend too much energy daydreaming about the Peace Corps, I won’t have any energy left to actually prepare for it. The same goes for any eventuality. If you waste valuable time being anxious or too excited for an upcoming event, you lose the opportunity to live in the present and take advantage of what’s happening now.

I recently met a returned volunteer that served in Africa. Some useful advice:

• Buy a head light to watch out for snakes hiding in the toilet 
• Take prenatal pills (super pills for the undernourished) 
• Avoid a type of malaria medication that induces hallucinations 
• Don’t be an easy target 

And most importantly,

• Your job as a volunteer isn’t to change anyone or anything. Your job is to understand. It is the hope that with mutual understanding and trust, you can eventually help the community you serve.

In A Jane Austen Education, William Deresiewicz says:

“The job of a teacher, I now understood, is neither to affirm your students’ notions nor to fill them with your own. The job is to free them from both.”

Wise words, Mr. D. I hope to overcome the community members’ skepticism of my seemingly neo-colonialist attitude to eventually build a rapport with them. I can’t attempt to serve the community if I don’t understand first. And from experience, mutual understanding often begets mutual trust. And I think that is a pretty good basis for teaching well. 

Nostalgia

I’m a nostalgic person. And ever since I was officially invited, I’ve had many dreams of people from my past. We’ve all made a bunch of mistakes and have learned from them. And I consider myself a relatively emotionally healthy person. So what accounts for the nostalgia? I’ve never thought much about it, but the dreams prompted the questioning of my chronic nostalgia.

There are pros and cons to being nostalgic.

Pros: Reflecting on the past can be healthy. It’s a review of my life. If I’m unhappy about an aspect of my life, I’m given the opportunity to reflect and possibly fix the problem by seeking closure. 

Cons: The con to being nostalgic is the probability of never looking forward. I’ve made a lot of mistakes. But perhaps looking back at all those mistakes won’t always offer an opportunity to learn because I may continually make those same mistakes.

So I’ve categorized my nostalgia in two forms: 

1. Reflecting for closure

2. Dwelling for self-pity

I don’t mean to put all my eggs in one basket, but I hope my Peace Corps experience can help reduce my frequency for self-pity by teaching me how to increase my capacity for resilience and for frankly, getting over myself.

Four More Months

I was officially invited to serve as a Deaf Education Volunteer. If I pass further legal and medical reviews, I’ll depart for Kenya in four months. That means I have four months to start learning Kenyan Sign Language (KSL).

I’m actually quite intimidated to learn KSL because first of all, I’m not even fluent in American Sign Language (ASL). So I sometimes lack the natural flow and grace that fluent signers seem to have. I once saw two deaf people get into an argument, and the way they signed reminded me of an intricate, modern dance. Second, I’m not taking up KSL to simply converse and get around. I have to teach in KSL. But I’m hopeful for an easy assimilation and confident that YouTube will again serve as the makeshift teacher I could always rely on.

So here’s to the next four months! Perhaps I should also brush up on modern dance fundamentals.