When I ran meetings at college, I of course was the first one there, actually often not, but my somewhat frequent tardiness is not the point. Whenever I did (as the one running the meeting) manage to get there first, I often would get this feeling, this mixture of antsyness, anxiety, and dread. I cared a lot about my meetings and I cared a lot about what came out of them, but I needed people, I needed help and other input, ideas, and forces besides me. I knew I needed these things, and I also knew that getting students to meetings, though they can be lured with food and promises, is incredibly difficult and for the most part out of my control. I remember having conversations with others about the phenomenon of even if you schedule a meeting around a meal, still students won’t come, and one is left wondering, “but don’t they have to eat?” “Isn’t it in a student’s best interest to, especially a high-powered Wellesley student’s interest, to combine both a constructive meeting and eating in one?” “Isn’t multi-tasking a fav activity of the Wellesley student?” Apparently not always, or maybe a meeting and a meal aren’t enough tasks; maybe it needs to be a meeting, meal, and lecture all at the same time. Anyways, I am having that pre-meeting feeling now, except with an extra heaping of dread. At Wellesley even though I frequently felt anxious about getting things done and students organized, I could always fall back on the fact that I was a student. No matter what, I was not in the ideal context for instituting sustainable ideas of development. Discussing them perhaps, or mobilizing students on a small scale maybe, but in terms of actually working on implementing long term projects and ideas, there was always a paper that came first or that was procrastinated off till the last moment and then written, or changed into a somewhat elusive “activism project,” regardless, the academics took a large chunk of time. And that’s ok and good. As one of my best friends has commented and consistently reminded me, you need a balance of reflection and action, otherwise your action will be reflectionless and most likely without a true grounding to sustain it or a meaning to nurture it.
I have a hard time with this concept. First of all action is often much more fun then reflection. Secondly, when one may or may not feel a global urgency to act or frequent feelings of dark impending doom, it’s hard to think that reflection is worth the time when those cartoon clouds of blackness and puffy edges are clouding your sky. I definitely felt anxious upon arrival to my village as I had been gone and felt that I had to step it up on the project front. I feel as if I have done relatively little in my village and that’s fine, I know the point of Peace Corps is in part cultural exchange and in part working to make just a small impact, and even if it’s small that doesn’t take away from its strength. And maybe part of my anxiety is that I am anxious about making a small impact. Or anxious that a small impact could in fact be strong and sustain itself. But I feel anxious and I feel weighted down by all the promises I have made, about a women’s center that still needs a lot of funding, about land that I have somehow promised to revitalize, about bringing in rocket stoves that I know very little about. And even if I did complete all of these projects I know it’s not enough and of course I know, I, as just one person can never be that “enough,” but I have a hard time really sincerely feeling that, or convincing myself that it’s ok. And I talk to people about this and they try to convince me with well-thought out logical arguments, with stories, with their ideas, and their inspirations, and I am inspired by them, and I do see their point, but I just am not wholly convinced, I just don’t feel it and I wonder what type of action I have to complete or what type of argument I have to hear to know that an effort is enough, to know my effort is enough.
