Taking Risks. Feeling Alive!
A short reflection from the week - where i felt most alive!
Yesterday, we had our second jiomepls community huddle, where I helped to facilitate the session on ups and downs of our journey in the social space. It was an emotional experience for me! I notice my curiosity in wanting to know the pain of each person; i feel like many a times, people in the social sector feel alot of pain and empathy for others, and they verbalise that pain (eg. struggles with the system) but not the pain (internal struggles) they are experiencing within themselves. (i think, maybe it’s a Singaporean thing actually, i dunno? ._.)
From my own experience it was not an easy journey, to take stand for things you believe in, to support a cause you feel strongly for. Anyway, since conversations tend to stay in the headspace and that was not the intention, i took the risk to share my personal stories of struggle, got pretty emotional in the moment. But i did that to hold to the context of the discussion. I realised when more people reveal more about themselves, the safety in the group increases.
“What did you wished you believe more in?”
(my friend WL asked) Sometimes I realised I wished i believed more in myself, instead of what more ‘experienced’ people say. They say i’m too young to do this or that. That you are new, and you just don’t know how things work yet. Or what you’re doing isn’t really of value.
What a pity it is, if we all just stopped there!
In fact I am so glad that we chose to pursue what we believe in. Because the truth is, we all experience different realities and see different things, it isn’t a matter of age or experience; it’s about believing in yourself, and making a stand for ourselves. So that at the end of the day, we can say that we did our best, with no regrets!
Also, given increasingly multi-faceted problems - there is no one who really has the complete solution to things. Governments and Institutions used to come up with solutions to social issues, and we can see that that alone is not enough. Increasingly complex problems require co-creation from different stakeholders (communities, ground-ups, corporates, etc), by virtue where we can’t see our own blindspots.
Anyway - i would like to wrap this post up with what I’ve mentioned to the group as well: Together let's embrace more of ourselves, celebrate incompleteness, so that we can be of service to others with our full presence.
In embracing incompleteness, we become whole. Isn’t it? By admitting that certain systems, policies and programmes don’t work, that’s the first step to working together with others to make it more ‘whole’.