Reflection (LONG post)

This is it – the end of the year 2011. It’s odd to think of how far I have come this year, and this year alone. Just from last January to now, I’ve tried a lot of new things, and accomplished a great deal. I am proud of my own personal growth, and I am glad for everything that I have been through this year, because it all has helped in that growth.

At the beginning of the year, I was involved in a relationship that lasted a total of five and a half months – the longest and most serious relationship that I have had to date (no pun intended). This relationship started me on a road to step out of my comfort zone in ways I had never experienced before, having never been in as serious a relationship before. I was able to challenge myself emotionally, and that helped to foster healthy emotional growth.

As that relationship came to an end in late April, I was further able to drive myself to become a better person. I was hurt for a little while, but quickly came to realize the opportunity that I had in front of me. As a relationship comes to an end, there are three options that the person on the “broken-up-with” side can choose.

The first is to wallow in the hurt, refusing to move forward from the point that the other person left you on. This, obviously, is not the optimal choice, but the choice that most of us go through at the very beginning. It is an essential part of the processing of the information, but staying in this state for too long is not at all healthy.

The second option that we have is to get over it and move on. This choice is the most popular, particularly in books, movies, and television shows today. “Just get over him, move on with your life. He doesn’t deserve you, anyway,” has become the advice of the best friend, the meddling parent, and many other character stereotypes in the media. Though this option is much better than simply wallowing in the sadness of the break-up, there is a better choice.

The third option is by far my favorite. Rather than wallowing, or simply getting over the experience and moving forward with my life, I chose to grow. I allowed the experience to change me, and strove to take the first steps toward becoming the person that I prefer to be. I set out to broaden my horizons, to try new things, to meet new people, and, ultimately, to change for the better.

This golden opportunity came to me in the form of my summer job at camp. May rolled through, as did the beginning of June, and I found myself once again in the forested company of the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center. This place (as I have mentioned many times throughout this blog) has been my summer home for a good portion of my life. I cannot imagine a summer without camp, and cannot wait to return again.

The Camp has a way of taking a person – campers and staff members alike – and giving them the atmosphere that they need for positive change. So many people have grown because of this amazing place –hundreds of staff members, thousands of campers – and each has their own story. I won’t prattle about my past years at camp (I’ve talked a great deal about those years in my second blog entry), but will instead say how camp this summer has helped me to grow.

The atmosphere at camp is peaceful. There is a beautiful setting, full of trees, fresh air, animals, and lots of growing things – plants and people alike. There is something to be said about the emotional cleansing that occurs with the daily swimming in the lake, or the burning of the heart that occurs with every campfire and candle-lit worship service. There is always someone around, reminding you that however lonely you may feel, you aren’t alone. There is always space for meditations of the mind, or of the heart, and a gentle breeze to waft through and remind you that things are always moving and changing.

Camp is an optimal place to let yourself change and grow. The people around you are as accepting and loving as any you’d meet, and each year I leave thinking that it’s been the best summer yet, the most cohesive staff yet, the most loving community yet, only to be completely blown away the next summer. It is difficult to think of how we become so like a family with fifty-odd other people in the course of two months, all while doing the job that was given to you of making smaller families with the campers with each new week, but somehow we manage to do it. This summer family of mine has helped my courage and my heart both to grow, and shown me how to reach out to others. I can care for others while still taking care of myself, and can reach out to people when I start to feel down.

My friends at school all took notice when I went back in the fall. Some mentioned to me how much they had seen I had grown, and how much happier I had become because of it. I was much happier. I made myself more social, while still focusing my time and energy on the schoolwork that mattered. I put myself out there again and, even after quite a few dramatic failures the previous semester, I auditioned for both Yorick’s Midsummer Night’s Dream and the Harlequin Musical Revue. I received parts in both, however small, but both of these reminded me why I loved performing so much.

These shows reminded me that it was not so much about the part you got, or the amount of lines you had, or how you looked in your costume. It wasn’t even about the show you picked, the quality of the production, or how well you knew your lines and cues (though each of those does help, in the end). Truly, the reason that I loved the theatre so much was because of the camaraderie that went along with it. The laughs and silly gestures during inappropriate lines during a read-through, the backstage giggles, the jokes that only someone involved in the show would understand…all of these were the main reason I got involved again. The adrenaline rush from being under the warm stage lights as someone other than myself was second to that feeling of camaraderie that can be had with a close-knit cast.

Now here it is, December 31st and counting down the time to the brand new year. What will 2012 bring? Happiness? Love? The destruction of the world? Only time will tell. But there is more personal growth to be had, more friends to make, more love to give, more people to make smile. I cannot wait.

Walk Like Royalty

In his book, The Sovereign Soul, Phillip Gowins describes a meditation exercise involving seeing others and oneself as royalty. He introduces the exercise by asking those meditating to imagine how a sovereign who takes responsibility for all it governs sees the world around them. He then asks us to see others as this sort of royalty, as well. He says, “You must glimpse the fundamental reality that you are a sovereign soul, royalty, a king or a queen. Then you will know how you should see others, and how others should see you. So, walk like a king. Walk like a queen. Walk like a sovereign soul.” What would occur in our world today if we started to regard one another with the same courtesy and respect, despite any differences we may have?

The first step would be for everyone to realize that they are indeed royalty. They must understand and accept that they are royalty, and therefore have immense power and responsibility. The power of the monarch is vast. The royalty, after all, is the figurehead of the state they govern. A royal is seen with high respect and reverence. At the same time, though, one must understand that the powers of a monarch have a distinct directive. Each individual has a responsibility to the world around them. A king or queen looking at their world realizes what it is that their lands need, and that it is their responsibility to provide that. A responsible sovereign settles disputes, provides for their governed, and regards their own non-essential desires as less important than the essential needs of those around them. This balance, I believe, would be the most difficult part to achieve.

The next step, once this is achieved, is for everyone to see each other as the sovereign that they are. As previously stated, a royal gains a certain amount of respect in the eyes of others. Therefore, if everyone is royalty, then everyone should be treated with that level of respect, and everyone should treat anybody they meet with that same level of respect. This somewhat emulates the “Golden Rule” that we are taught as children – treat others as you wish to be treated – to a higher degree. Rather, treat others better than we would wish to be treated and regard one another with a mutual respect and understanding.

Of course, achieving this mentality in everyone is virtually impossible. There will always be someone who prefers to see themselves as more important than others, as “higher” than others. There will be those who accept the power of the monarch without regarding the responsibility. There will even be those who can see the sovereign soul in others but cannot find it in themselves. But think of the world we could live in if this was a possibility. A world based on mutual respect for all, regardless of age, ethnicity, place of origin, or personal views sounds like a world that I would want to live in. If we take our own steps towards seeing the sovereign soul in ourselves and others, and pave the way for others to do the same, perhaps we can work toward this sort of world as a goal.

Frigid

Today I’m feeling heavy. It has been years since I’ve last had to perform a funeral rite for a fish, but at least with that fish I had adequate enough time to bond with him before his final end.

Less than 48 hours ago, two friends and I invaded our local Petco, just to look around. A friend of ours had been there the day previous, and told us how beautiful all the new betta fish looked. There were many new colors and shades – golds, blues, vibrant reds, and even pale purples. They had every type of betta imaginable, it seemed. Crowntail, half-moon, double-tail, delta tail…lots of little fish chilling out in their tiny carry-home cups. I was overcome by a desire for a companion. After much coaxing and pleading over text message, my mother agreed to let me get a fish, provided that I was the one to take care of him. I agreed.

I found a beautiful, feisty blue crowntail betta that stuck out, and knew his name already. I had picked out the name a year and a half before, intending to get a fish as soon as I got to school, but never having the chance until now. I had been waiting since then to use the name: Gygax. The little blue crowntail fit his name perfectly.

I brought him home and put him in a temporary tank, and obsessed over the cleanliness and warmth of the water. The very next day I bought him a permanent tank, complete with a water heater, and transferred him into his new home. I was pleased, and he seemed pleasantly amused with the tank. I didn’t feel like I had to worry much about him, but I continued to fuss anyhow. Was the light too bright, or too warm? Did he prefer the light off? Did he want the air filter on, or was the current from it too strong for him. He wasn’t swimming, was he just resting, or was he being sluggish? I spent more time fussing in that day than I fussed in my entire two years of owning my last betta.

Despite my fussing, Gygax did not survive the second night. Somehow his water heater had become unplugged, and the chill of the night swept in. He was not able to withstand the unearthly chill of the North Adams night, even with all windows closed and whatever heat the school was supplying flowing in vain through the room. Even I felt the air’s chill especially last night, and when I woke up in the morning, my Gygax had perished.

I gave him a “proper Viking funeral” – sans flame – between classes this morning, complete with the playing of “Eulogy Song” by SJ Tucker. I found it fitting…in part due to the title, but also in part because of the lyrics:
The skeleton inside insists that every step's a toy, a eulogy for a heavy metal boy … I feel a night flight coming on … the skeleton dance forces up all joy, one last hurrah with your heavy metal boy, skip all the graveyards stone by stone . All alone , and what are you thinking?

It is with a heart heavy with guilt and regret that I write this. Perhaps if I had double-checked before going to bed that he had his heater plugged in…perhaps if I had done this differently, or done that differently, maybe I’d still have him with me. I know that perhaps it seems silly to place so much on the death of a small fish I had only had for such a short period of time, and perhaps it really is silly. But at the same time, it reminds me that there is such mortality in all of us. Though I did my best to care for him as I saw his needs, in the end, he did not have the warmth to survive the night.

Maybe I am crazy to think in metaphors constantly, but this particular one resonates with me. People need warmth in all manners – temperature, emotion, closeness to others – and it is that much easier to perish in this world without it, even if all other needs are met. How often nowadays do those with cold and dejected hearts end things when they cannot seek out and do not have the ability to tell others about the warmth that they need?

Winter is coming. I can feel the chill already.

Big Heart, Fresh Start

Set the stage: summer, 2011, at the Barbara C. Harris Camp and Conference Center. The day was June 20th, a short nine days after I and fifty-odd other young men and women had arrived at the camp to begin staff training for the summer. Get-to-know-you games and team-building activities were scattered freely across the schedule of training sessions, and my coworkers were already bonding fast. New friendships began to quickly form, old ones were being restored, and everyone was having a wonderful experience. Everyone, that is, except for me.

I loved playing the games, and learning new ones; that wasn’t a problem. The games would be optimized later in the summer by occupying our campers as they waited to be let into the dining hall before each meal at the Rock – Bob the Weasel, Germ and Doctor, Squirt, and Ninja Destruction were among the camp’s favorites. I knew the words and the little chants to each of them in turn, and knew all the little tricks to winning them.

I loved the songs, too; that wasn’t a problem, either. Singing the songs that had, in my several years at the camp, become part of my ever-expanding (and fittingly campy) repertoire of camp songs was a point of my pride. I could do the actions to each song in my sleep, if I so desired. I could sing the entire last verse of Rattlin Bog in a single breath, with hand motions, a feat that took several summers of practice: “And…the elephant on the amoeba, and the amoeba on the feather, and the feather on the wing, and the wing on the bird, and the bird in the egg, and the egg in the nest, and the nest on the leaf, and the leaf on the branch, and the branch on the limb, and the limb on the tree, and the tree in the stump, and the stump in the root, and the root in the bog, and the bog down in the valley-o!”

I even enjoyed all our training sessions. I loved learning all of the tools for a successful summer. I could apply an Epi-pen if I had to. I could keep a child from homesickness with encouraging words about events to come. I knew how to take an over-energized group of six nine- and ten-year-olds and turn them into a cooperative and loving family in the course of a week.

These were not the things that bothered me. On the contrary, these activities kept me involved in the staff dynamic. No, my problem was that, as each summer before had come to pass without fail, I curled up into myself as soon as the option came for me to interact with my peers. To this day I do not know whether this was out of a desire to avoid rejection, or out of simple shyness (though, who among my friends would call me shy?) but whatever the cause, the effect was the same each and every year.

This persisted for nearly the entirety of those nine days, to my dismay. I had managed to salvage my cordial and respectful rapport with the other returning counselors, and even managed to create a new friendship, but for some reason on that evening in late June, I sat in silence, dwelling on my shortcomings rather than my accomplishments.

It was the night of our second staff camp-out, and each small-group of counselors was assigned to an area of camp with their respective Team Leaders. My small-group was assigned with another to set up camp in a clearing just off of the lake trail. The site overlooked the water, and the grassy soil dropped off down into the shallow banks of Otter Lake just a few feet off the path. The path itself wound like a snake from the waterfront swim area and into the surrounding woods, joining with the narrower red and yellow hiking trails through the thicket of the camp as it twisted with the water’s edge. Also joining the trail, just before reaching the clearing where we would camp, was the site where Closing Campfire would be held at the end of each week, bringing about the symbolic end of each camp session.

This large, mulched clearing sat directly adjacent to the water’s edge, with Otter Lake threatening to tickle up against the tree stump that served as the marker to the invisible boundary of how close to the water’s edge one could get. Several rows of makeshift benches crudely fashioned out of the halves of large logs sat perpendicular to the water’s edge, three benches in each row. Two fire circles, built up with large stones found around camp in the renovations of the Closing Campfire site, sat at the ends of the aisles between the benches.

We had pitched our tents already and spent some time “bonding” with one another until we had one nice, big fire going in the farthest fire circle from the water. It was beginning to get dark, and the moon started to rise over the shimmering water. Stars blinked into existence as the group socialized in the burning orange glow, telling stories, laughing, and playing. All the while, I sat on the edge of the group, waiting for an invitation to be included. The one friend I had succeeded in making was off spending time with her new significant other, and so was nowhere to be found. I found myself not in the best of moods, on the outside looking in (again). After a good amount of time sitting in the shadow of the campfire, my invitation arrived.

Aiden was a young man with whom I never imagined myself getting along. I barely knew him; he gave off the air of the stereotypical jock upon first impression, and so I hadn’t bothered to try. He initially struck me as arrogant, immature, and not at all serious about the job we were meant to do that summer. How wrong I was…

Somehow, though my quietness and solitude was drowned out by all the fun and laughter going on around me, Aiden managed to find me. He sat right down beside me on the bench and began to talk to me. I was very surprised, as I had barely spoken to him before. He asked about how I was feeling, what was going on, and why I wasn’t joining in with everyone else. I sat in silence for a few moments, partially from shock and partially from uncertainty.

There was some inhibition within me that said opening up to him could have disastrous results. The last time that I had told someone how I felt in this regard was the year I was a Counselor in Training. I had brought myself to tears with the tale of my estrangement. Still I was met with disbelief and complete lack of support from the group that was meant to be my camp family. It had been two years since the debacle of my CIT year, and the scar left behind from it still ached within me.

There was something else in me, though, that pushed those feelings aside. I told him exactly what was on my mind. I felt left-out of things. I was alone. I didn’t feel like a part of the staff. Friendships were forming all around me, and I felt powerless to make my own. I couldn’t manage it all. I’d been the loner at the camp since I was a camper; I wanted to find a way to be involved this year. I sat and waited patiently, hoping that he would at least sympathize.

Aiden blew me away with his response. He opened up to me in return, telling me that there was no reason for me to feel left out, and that already he and others had thought so highly of me that I had, apparently, become the topic of positive conversation between him and his cabin-mates. “Someone in my cabin said that you have a big heart,” he told me, “and they’re right.” That strange admiration that I to this day don’t fully understand made me smile, and made my night so much more than I thought it could be.

I grew more as a person in that one summer than I had in my previous twelve summers of camp combined, and the seed to that growth was that one sentence. I would not have found my place at the camp, the confidence to make new friends, or the feeling of being part of something so much bigger than myself were it not for that brief moment at the Closing Campfire site. I could fully be myself, and never had the worry that my coworkers would condemn my outgoing and eccentric nature that had plagued me in summers past.

The very first camp session, I was paired with Aiden as my co-counselor. There was nobody else I would rather have worked with, and there is still nobody I’d rather have had that first group with. We had six phenomenal campers that week, and quickly became a family; I can’t remember in my several years as a counselor ever being so close to a group of kids, or to a co-counselor. No other small-group of mine had ever implemented nightly group hugs as part of our reflections on our day, or followed the rule sets so well that we could stop reminding them, “Stay in line, don’t run!” by the middle of Wednesday. If Aiden had not already proved my prejudgments completely false, that week was enough to shatter them to pieces, breaking away who I thought he’d be and showing the true shining individual underneath.

The conversation we shared at Closing Campfire was the stepping stone for my entire summer. It took me that first week of staff training to gather the courage enough to open up, and it became easier and easier as the summer went on. I connected more deeply with my peers at camp than I had any summer previous, and managed to make several new friends from both the United States and overseas. I cannot help but think that I would not have grown as much as a person from all of my summer experiences if Aiden had not taken that small step to keeping me included.