To Jump
When Danielle was seven, she believed she could fly. Throwing herself into the air with all limbs flailing, she would inevitably always land with a thud, leaving bruised knees and elbows. In her own words, she described it as, “The feeling that even for just one ‘Mississippi’ I could be surrounded by nothing but the air I breathed. It was my being, even if it was just for a moment.”
When she climbed out on that ledge that day, there was no other way down. She had to jump. The rocks were slippery and the climb was steep, but it was an intentional choice that she had made, intent on facing what she felt was an irrational fear. The fear of the jump. If she planned on getting home, she knew she would have to go against every instinct in her body and leap, leaving behind the sold rock that lay beneath her trembling feet.
Below her were her team members’ expectant faces, while inside of her was a voice frantically searching for a loophole to escape jumping. But there was none. Finally, her own frustration with herself won out, and she jumped - because she refused to be the girl who couldn’t jump.
But that day, Danielle learned a valuable lesson - perhaps one of her most meaningful to date. She learned what it was to feel helpless, to be lost in one location, unable to move in any other direction. She learned that just being there wasn’t enough - she had to jump.
When people join us on Hero Holiday, they join for many different reasons: some come to make change, some come to be changed, some come to find understanding. It is in this understanding that compassion truly happens. And compassion confronted Danielle this past summer, on her last day at the garbage dump.
During a quiet moment that day, while helping out a young Haitian woman, Danielle was invited to come join her in her shelter on the edge of the garbage dump. It was made of sticks and sheets, and it was the only reprieve from the relentless sun that beat down upon them day after day. She felt honoured to have been invited in, realizing that this was a life moment she would never soon forget. As she sat there with her friend and her mother on old, giant tins, the flies swarmed around them. Clinging to her sticky and sweaty arms, she would jerk her body and try to swat at them. She was disgusted by their quantity and endless buzzing.
But as she looked over at her new friends, she noticed something for the first time. They weren’t jerking and swatting at the flies; they were sitting quite still and simply enjoying the shade and their company.
I suddenly felt embarrassed - ashamed of myself for making such a fuss over something so normal in their lives, which they had no power to stop. I began to wonder what does it mean simply to accept flies; to sit, unmoved by their constant swarming and crawling all over your tired body? It is so wrong in so many ways but there was something inside of me that had to understand, I couldn’t bear to have our worlds separated any longer by something so simple. And so, for a moment, I decided to be still. I allowed them to land on my limbs and my sweaty back - and there I found myself, plunging into a new reality, so immersed that it filled my soul. It was my being, even if it was just for a moment.
Some people may wonder why she bothered. What difference does it make if we fully understand what it is to be in someone else’s shoes? Some may think she was wasting her time and should have been back out there working harder and helping that family get more money from the recyclables that they collect at that dump. But some of you may read these words and identify with Danielle: perhaps, sometimes you just need to jump.
Danielle’s story reminds me every day that if change can start in me, change can start anywhere.
To find out more about Absolute’s Hero Holiday trips to Dominican Republic, or any of our other locations, check out www.heroholiday.com.
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel” ~ Bonnie Jean Wasmund
September 30th, 2010Topic: FB, 52, Newsletter
