As our trip is coming to an end, my mind is calm. To use some of the words people brought up in reflection, I feel very tired but accomplished, anxious but content, and most importantly, full. I believe we all feel very full after this week due to the abundance of knowledge we gained and new experiences we went through as a group. Also, we very much appreciated all of the Hoosier hospitality that was shown to us. Indianapolis is a truly magical place, and is very much underrated for all of the cool things they are doing. I have also never visited a state where the people have so much pride for their home. There is actually a whole new exhibit in the works at the downtown library that will be filled with books only by Indiana authors tailored towards the education and entertainment of children. It didn’t take long at all for me to fall in love with everything about this state and this trip. I fell in love with the state and all of its kindness and passion; I fell in love with learning, especially about how to better sustain this beautiful earth; and I fell in love with eight other people, who, just like myself, have a passion for serving and gaining knowledge, and a desire to help make this world a better place. The bond we all created together is something I could never have predicted, but one that I will hold close to my heart for a long time to come. We were all on the same page when making decisions or changing plans, and we all were great at going with the flow and really working hard when the situation called for it. I felt at home the entire week, and there really isn’t anything I ever felt mad or frustrated about, or anything I would have changed. This was a flawless trip to say the least, and I honestly cannot fathom the extent to which I loved it, but boy I did.
Today was our last day of service, and I think that it was a great way to wrap up everything we have experienced so far. Somehow the order of how our service days played out fell perfectly, because if any two days were switched, this trip would have been a very different experience. This just goes along with my strong belief of things happening for a reason, because our trip leaders really didn’t plan the service days in a certain order, they just happened to fall in line perfectly. I thought today was a good way to wrap everything up because we visited the Indiana Land Trust, which is a plot of land that is protected forever so that no one can ever destroy the natural environment in all of its 60 acres. All we did today was cut some winter creeper, an invasive species, off of trees and applied some herbicide to kill it, and it only lasted a couple of hours. However, it was valuable because our leader, who was so passionate about wildlife and nature, and so eager to answer our questions as well as listen to our stories and thoughts. My favorite thing about her though, was that she didn’t have all the answers. We would ask questions and to some of them she may just respond with “I don’t know,” and then rephrase it to ask us the same thing, causing us to think deeply about these issues we’ve been learning about all week. I have definitely learned that nature is unpredictable, and while we shouldn’t go on destroying all of it, some of the ways we are trying to “preserve” it could very well be just as harmful. This is just a very small tidbit of the topics our leader made us ponder today, and I found it to be very overwhelming yet calming to think about with her and while discussing the matters in reflection with our group.
Another huge part about this trip I really cherished was how it caused me to think about what I am truly passionate about. I learned a lot about myself this trip, too much to discuss here, but I wouldn’t have learned it anywhere else this spring break. The thing that kept creeping into my mind though, was how I can incorporate all of this knowledge I have been gaining into my life right now and my career in the future. What I decided is that I really can incorporate the things related to this trip that I am passionate about in both situations, and I get a little surge of excitement when I think about all of the possibilities for doing just that. I have been questioning whether I am going down the right path in terms of my major lately, but this trip has caused me to think about my major in a different way, and I have realized how I can be excited about it by also being excited about what I love to do on a regular basis.
To wrap everything up, one of our advisers mentioned something that really stuck with me today, and that is to ask yourself, “Why?” This means to really think about your purpose for doing all the things that you do, and I definitely don’t do this enough. Eventually though, I do believe I will find a more solid foundation for the reasons why I do things, and I will feel more complete and more confident in all that I do. What I learned from this is, and to quote a fellow member’s dad, “When you wake up in the morning, have a purpose bigger than yourself.” I think that if more people would do this, it would be astonishing how much we could accomplish as a whole just working together to better this world.
Namaste, friends. I’ll catch you later 🙂