Piece by Piece

Those of you who go to my church will know "piece-by-piece" as the annoying name for the equally annoying project that my mum is involved in, where a bunch of middle aged women get together to have a gossip in the name of "official church business" and along the way keep track of which people are 'buying' bits of the new building that is under construction (ie. John Smith paid X amount to the building fund for a new door). My obvious cynicism basically extends from the fact that if people really want it built, they really shouldn't need a tacky gimmick to loosen their wallets. I'll be putting my money where my mouth very soon as well, having got my 2005 tax return about a week ago. Anyway... that's all totally irrelevant to the original point of this post.

I've spent the last week up at one of my favourite places... a campsite to the north-east of Melbourne that's on the way up to the snow. I've been there heaps throughout my teenage years as a participant in their teen camps. For the last three years I've been a volunteer leader on their kids camps - for Grade 4 to Year 7 - which run every 6 months. The camp leader routine is pretty intense. Basically you're just "on" the entire time. You get up before the kids for a 7am leaders' meeting, then wake them up for brekky and spend the day with them bouncing from one activity to the next. It is extremely tiring but also extremely rewarding. I had the privilege of being able to get to know an amazing group of kids. Some of them have been on previous camps and I always find it intriguing to see how much they've grown up or changed in the 6 or 12 months since I last saw them.

Camps like this were, for me, major developmental milestones in my teenage years. Spending a week outside of my own family context in a social setting, in an environment which encourages people to actively care about and invest in each other... it's a far stretch from what the 'real world' seems to offer at times. Looking back I can see some distinct learning experiences that have shaped me for the better, because I was stretched or challenged in some way on those camps. Of course, with kids, those challenges - which often involve reaching some sort of crisis point in your framework for viewing and dealing with the world around you - are much more extreme in a lot of cases. Hang on, I'm going to have to explain that better.

For me, I would often get to a point on camp where I had to change my behaviours in terms of relating to others or my mindsets in terms of how I viewed myself and viewed others in relation to myself. That would usually be brought about by something massively not working the way I wanted, as I interacted with other people on the camp. I might have felt like a friend was ignoring me, or that I wasn't as cool as the hot new camp couple who were holding hands for all to see at dinner... whatever it was, big or small, obvious or unnoticed, it caused some sort of shift in the way I was approaching the world.

For kids, the same things seem to happen but in more kiddish ways (funny that!). Fighting and bullying, trying to impress the other guys, general boys-will-be-boys wrestling and carrying on, refusing to participate in activities because they didn't get their own way about something, dropping the lip because they didn't win, insisting on a completely self-centred black-and-white execution of justice, and my personal favourite - looking around to discover that mum is not there to hold their jumper or take their rubbish and having to follow through on simple stuff when extremely mean and unsympathetic camp leaders (like myself) make them think for themselves.

Anyway, after a week of having my every waking moment programmed to precision, with the exception of a couple of spare hours which I used to sleep, I've gone through the process of coming back to my day-to-day life and resuming it, one piece at a time. I've been through this process of reflection before. Sometimes it's been extremely difficult. Other times it's been great. Since camp pretty much causes you to completely reset your life, from your sleeping patterns, diet and activity levels, right through to more abstract questions of life, the universe and everything, I find myself coming back to each little bit of my life as I knew it before I left for the week away. As I pick up each piece again, one at a time, it prompts me to ask whether I still want it, or not.

In the past, these times have been quite traumatic. I remember coming back from last winter camp, going into the last semester of my undergrad degree with a strong sense of being lost and displaced. I wasn't enjoying uni but I had to put up with it for another 6 months, which wasn't terrible in the end. It was coming to a close, which also raised questions of "what next". I was looking down the barrel of six months with my head down. I felt like I was totally lost in the crowd without any friends. That wasn't true but it felt that way. Friendships that had been dynamic and uplifting had been turning into irregular catchups, partly because I was deliberately pulling back from things. Through some poor choices and low levels of self-awareness, I made it worse for myself by saying various stupid things to different people, all the while mostly wanting to feel a sense of peace and belonging. I've since paid the price for that. I guess you live and learn.

This time around, picking up the pieces has had the opposite effect. Rather than wondering about the shoulds, woulds and coulds of life and getting caught up in ideas that aren't necessarily realistic, this time I'm finding myself realising that, as the Paul Colman song says, "life is where you are" (ignore the verse for now :P).
(Paul Colman's site is here if you want to listen to his more recent stuff as well.)

On occasion, I've definitely spent a lot of time pushing myself to move towards how I want things to look, perhaps without fully appreciating what they look like to begin with or critiquing my own motives for wanting them that way. I'm not completely sure what's going to happen next... but I'm OK with that.

We're all looking for security
It's the basic drug of human need
I've lost faith in things that fade
Or things that get stolen or get taken away
And up on that mountain we saw our days
Rise like a vapour and float away

Life is where you are
Oh, life is where you are