Sunday, February 16, 2014

Tim Burns

Before my time in India I thought I would be able to dictate the experiences I had, the emotions I felt, and the lessons I learnt upon my return. I thought I would be able to specifically choose what would have an impact on me and what wouldn’t. After months and months of meetings and preparation I thought I had a pretty accurate idea of what it would be like once over there. I was wrong.

 

We had copious amounts of completely contrasting experiences during the immersion that ranged from standing around in a circle participating in a laughing club/intense aerobics class, to standing on the edge of a slum in Mumbai crying our eyes out. We experienced the hope and inspiration of numerous NGOs such as ASHA, Future Hope, the Jungle Crows and the Magicians to name a few, and we experienced the complete opposite such as the stark reality of places like Brooklyn in Kolkata. We truly went through, for lack of a better cliché, a roller coaster ride of emotions. For the good times and the hard times, I would not change a single one.

 

There’s no way that any of us would be able to get all our contemplations down on this single last blog entry, or be able to perfectly summarise how we feel and what we’ve gained from the trip. But it’s never going to be perfect and it’s never going to be finalised. After all, life is messy, constantly changing, and is not meant to be kept in perfect little compartments.

 

I don’t think we are even able to comprehend just yet what we all have learnt and what to make of the entire month ourselves let alone explain it all to others specifically. But as I was advised, we will have a mid-life crisis every day for the rest of our lives where we will think about deep stuff; and so far that has proven to be a rather sound statement.

 

India gave me a completely new perspective on a variety of things that I feel I had overlooked before. As I said in one of my later blogs, the local people were the saving grace of a country that would otherwise pose as too difficult to bear. The act of acknowledging the fact that each individual, in the population of over 1 billion people, has had an upbringing just as intricate as my own puts into perspective just how small I am in this world. After meeting such wonderful people and being thrust about by a country that you struggle to be alone in, and of course after losing to an 11 year old in chess, I can’t help but feel less ‘special’ than I did before. I once felt as though I could take on the world and do anything I wanted. The truth is there are billions of other people that are just as special as me.

 

It now feels like the month went past in the blink of an eye, and I strongly believe it has actually changed me. Not in any radical way in which I am now determined to shave my head and go off to work in the slums for the rest of my life, because that clearly isn’t true. But I think it has changed my way of thinking and opened up a world to me that I ‘knew’ was there but never really understood. This experience will influence who I am for the rest of my life; I have been humbled by it. I’ve taken away so much but also have realised how little I know and how much more there is to experience. Understanding now how much of the world there is to see and learn from, to understand rather than just know, is one of the truly exciting outcomes for me.

 

By no means do I believe I am even close to understanding India, and honestly I don’t think, even after I return there, which I very much hope to do, I ever will, but as Mr Skeen made perfectly clear “hey that’s ok”. After all, as a wise slogan on a rickshaw once said “life is a process of self-discovery”.

 

Thanks Aunty Rachel, Captain Shane and of course Mr Ben Skeen for an experience that won’t be forgotten or undervalued.

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