Not about WHY, about HOW

We fled the dong village at dawn and spent the rest of the day in transit to Shanghai. I don’t know whether it was because I was extremely tired but I cried entering into the city. I couldn’t help it. The sight was so devastating. Originally, I thought LA smog was bad, then I was appalled when I got to Beijing, and I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the pollution covering Shanghai. You see about a quarter to half mile ahead of you before the whole scene turns into a brown haze from the ground up. High rise labyrinths littered the sides of freeways and sported a coating of brown sludge on top of there paint; it resembled the snow directly adjacent to highways carrying diesel trucks. The amount of saplings and greenery on every over pass and turn off space gave an inclining that someone/something was trying to reverse the affects of over population. Despite the frequency of the shruberies, every green thing was covered in a thin brown layer and looked exhausted. Coming from the country side in full wet season to this site was a serious shock.
I tapped as a means to calm down but the emotion and visual is forever ingrained in my psyche. In desperation I tried to pull my thoughts away from dark places, away from the question of ” WHY are we here?” Not why are we here physically in Shanghai but “WHY can’t people see what’s happening to their environment?” I know better than anyone that these questions lead to circular thinking and narcissism, no where helpful or progressive, so I tried to turn my head around. I recalled the conversation that one of my chaperones and I had yesterday. He has his doctorates In Physical chemistry and spent his schooling studying the nitrogen cycle. He is a smarty pants that is fighting the good fight. He gave me some insight. He explained to me what I already knew was true about the what predictive models show our o-zone will look like within the next century; not good. After a moment of silence I asked him “Do you have hope?”
He is a man of many stories and launched into one for an explanation. He explained that he used to teach environmental studies. The students he taught continually informed him how depressing the class was. He agreed something needed to change. So he began teaching chemistry and encouraging students to come up with ways that we can improve. HOW can we make our world better? Since, he has had a class put together a proposal for a bio diesel generator. The generator has powered school fundraisers and prom! He’s got many more progressive experiments up his sleeve and I hope to stay in contact with him to find out how they go.
From his story I also found hope. Hope in the youth I work with, hope for my friends that are already working on the Question of HOW and faith that I can as well keep HOW rather than WHY on my mind.
Enough emotional and verbal vomit…
The end of the trip with my students was fabulous! Despite my feelings about the city the students loved it. The city is much more in their scope of comfort than mine. Our last day was a student plan and run day where I got to be the kid and they got to lead,”I have to go to the bathroom! Are we there yet?”
The students where empowered and enthralled to have my trust instilled in them to walk around the markets of Shanghai.
Closing circle was eye opening for me. During the trip I had blinders on, I was focused on facilitation. It was rewarding to hear the verbal affirmations of realizations they had made along the way. Some of these realizations included: connections between personalities, to social groups, to community, to culture, to world; friends of old can still be kept close; traveling and experiencing a place are different entities and ways of seeing the world; there are many ways to accomplish a goal and your idea may just be one acceptable option. I was blown away by the maturity the students demonstrated.
Saying good bye to a group is always emotional for me. Detaching myself from an intense and influential energy source so suddenly is difficult and draining. I got a bit emotional at the airport and shed a few tears after seeing the group off to security.
And then there was two. Kim and I made our way back to the hotel breakfast Buffett to briefly debrief with the other leaders. I came to the realization that I did a lot of foundational work with my group. We laid bricks that can be reflected upon and built upon in the future. After eating ourself into a food coma, Kim and I proceeded to sleep for six hours, woke, walked, zombied about, ate suchi, talked, and slept again.