July 28, 2015

Why do I bother?

Presently this question is multi-layered for me.

I ask myself this question just about every day.

I’m currently spending my mornings at a summer camp, mentoring inner-city children from 3rd grade through 9th grade and teaching them life skills.

Well…attempting to, anyway.

Some of the kids are really, really good. “Good” meaning here that they are not set on verbally or physically attacking anyone else, and they have a genuine interest in reaping some kind of positive experience from being at camp. I do my best to be with those children…and it is difficult to hear the sound of their willingness over the din of the others’ resistance.

It is, without a single doubt, the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I cry almost every day, and the reasons for my tears alternate between sheer frustration at having to spend the majority of my time there getting most of them to stop screaming and fighting with each other and to engage in the lesson for even a few minutes, and realizing that many of them have never gotten a real, meaningful, heartfelt hug in their lives.

It’s an emotional rollercoaster.

And I ask myself over and over, Why do I bother?

Why do I keep going back, day after day? To continue getting upset and fight my own ego to not yell and freak out at them? To be exhausted after only three hours of teaching (so exhausted that I usually come home and collapse into an hour and a half-long nap)?

Are they even getting anything out of this? Do they even care that I’m there?

I just don’t know.

And that’s the thing - I don’t know.

I have little way of knowing how much, exactly, I’m getting through to them, how much of an impact the love and compassion I’m doing my best to bring there every day is sinking in to their fragile minds and hearts.

There is no measuring stick for how far they’ve come and how far they still have to go. I must constantly make presumptions and at the same time presume nothing.

Their lives are nothing like mine, and vice-versa.

The end of the summer will inevitably come and we will say goodbye to each other. I will probably never see most of them again for the rest of my life and I will have no way of knowing if they are OK, if they are happy, or if they are scared. My time with them is finite, as is everything else in this life.

There is light, though…I am starting to get hugs from a few of them. They are accepting me slowly into their circle, even though I am basically still a stranger. There is some transfer of loving energy going on when we are together that is not reaching all of them, or even most of them…but it is reaching a few of them, I think.

Maybe a couple of them will let it in.

Maybe one will keep it.

Maybe someday he or she will have been able to use that energy to make something beautiful out of his or her life.