I'm about a week and a half out from my adventure. I'm about $1700 away from my fund-raising goal. I'm jumping through hoops trying to get college cred for my internship. I wont see my friends or family for months. And I couldn't be more excited! I could go on about why I'm stoked for a while, but I'll save that for a video so you can see it in my face.
It's been busy preparing. We're doing a lot of pre-arrival training which is basically studying the conflict, familiarizing ourselves with the organization, watching various videos and answering questions about them. It's so sick because I've realize that it's about 13 times easier to learn something when you know that it matters and that it's involving people directly that you care about. There's so many terms now I understand better after a short video or article I've read the past week than after a semesters of history and poli-sci classes. I've decided they best way to learn is to be actively involved. I guess that goes for pretty much everything. A lot of classroom style educators, I think, need to do some mad rethinking about how to get kids interested. Don't teach people. Involve them.
Anyway,
We got our packing list, and this is pretty much it:
-one carryon/dufffel bag
-one backpack for notebooks/laptops/etc
-your sleepingbag/pillow
The list seemed small at first, for a 4 month trip, but I remember one trip to haiti, our bags got caught up and came late. I had everything I needed for two weeks in the bookbag I brought on the airplane, so when our bags finally came, it was all luxury. We really can live on much less than we think, and honestly, I enjoy that. I go into my room sometimes and think about all the excess junk, I don't use hardly anything in there. In fact if it all disappeared, I doubt I'd miss it.
I read on a fellow roadies post that his pastor told him that living in sacraficial love really isn't a sacrifice at all, rather it's like trading in lesser things for a greater joy. IC says it wants to in still the value of sacrifice in youth culture. But I think with many things, (not everything, but probably most) we only call giving it up a "sacrifice" because our values are so jacked up that we really feel as if we're losing something, when in fact what we are leaving behind was never valuable in the first place. So my thought of the day is: If something is so worth giving up that it'd be absurd to not do it, is it really a sacrifice?
gaahhhh bro! I feel you on the luxury stuff. I feel like I have waaaay too much stuff all the time and not only is it wasteful but it's incredibly stuffy. But I love how you're totally embracing an active role in what you care about. That shows true passion for it.
ReplyDeleteFor your question, I think it could be a sacrifice for some. People have convinced themselves that they need certain luxuries and crap so much that it becomes something that they believe they can't live without even though it's something completely absurd. Like TV remotes. No one believes that they're hooked on remotes but when they lose the remote instead of just changing the channel by hand they look EVERYWHERE for the remote (this is me). Or smoking. People don't give it up even though it's killing them because they enjoy the pleasure. But that analogy may not fit cause there's a physical addiction....
You're awesome brah! keep up the good work! BTW, as a roadie, do you just travel around the U.S. promoting IC? Just wondering how that all went down...
This is an incredibly well-written post...very insightful! I look forward to hearing more about your adventure. We are proud of you!
ReplyDeleteLove,
Jared & Chrissy