What a holiday! By GREGOR ERDMANN
For myself, it was just a holiday.
The thought of helping people, building communities, and generally being a good boy simply didn’t cross my mind. The idea of a holiday where you won’t spend your time looking at other’s lives through a window is what captured my imagination.
With a simple goal of enjoying myself abroad, I boarded that plane.
In our busy city lives, we smother our senses, cover our faces and live our existences as a multitude of quick fixes. Don’t like that smell? We have a spray to fix that. Not happy with the way you look? We have rouges and creams for that. Not feeling happy? We have pills and entertainment to cover that.
With so many masks, and cures that can be applied without a second’s hesitation, do we even know what it is to be human anymore? Can we recognize our innate imperfections? And when we do, do they make us feel bad, inadequate, broken, envious, unsatisfied? Did not God give us these imperfections? In fact why do we treat them as imperfections? Are they not simply the unique beauties of being human?
Stripping ourselves, and seeing others already stripped of these too-accessible conveniences it allows us to experience our beautiful humanity. We immediately become promoted and uplifted to pieces of art, each of us unique shining, there to inspire others in some way.
Seeing the poor, the greedy, the loving, the musical, the dirty, the superficial, the caring, the happy, the wealthy, the drunk, the noisy, people from the Philippines is like seeing humanity in the raw. Even with such a contrast between the haves and have-nots, it is actually easier to the similarities rather than differences between them. In fact it is easier to see the likeness to ourselves. Whenever you experience their generosity amidst poverty, their love over adversity, their pride amongst the garbage of the slums, remember that these people are humans like you, the same strength you see in them is also present in you.
What we all experienced in the Philippines will be with us always, not just because the images were so stark, but because there too is poverty in our own lives. We have had the opportunity to see it in its most obvious form, and learning from our experience and perhaps with a little extra effort we can learn to recognize its hidden and subtler brother within ourselves. Over time, we can enrich our lives and so doing make all our friends very wealthy.
Without realising it, some of us have already made steps in the right direction of making themselves wealthy. I remember during the first two days of the build, seeing my friends struggling with trowels, and cement blocks. Some mentioned that by the end of the week that they were stronger. Do not discount your improvements in skill as simple physical improvement. It goes far deeper than that.
When we started out, we were motivated not by helping our friends but rather by doing ‘our bit’. You can see it by the way we lifted the blocks in our arms and passed it to the person next to us. Our actions were not smooth, not coordinated… it was all about struggling with ‘our block’. When we painted, we did what we thought was right, we slapped on cement without observing and learning from our skilled locals. We had to heave and struggle, it was all about us feeling that we have put our backs into it.
By the end of the build, we worked like a well-oiled machine. We used the momentum of the block that our friend beside gave us and passed it on to the next in line. It was now about moving the blocks quickly and smoothly down the line. We no longer passed the blocks with our arms, but with our whole bodies. Our hearts were now involved in the building process. It was now about helping each other. We became more humble, and stopped to learn from our much more skilled elders and co-ordinate our efforts better.
Within that week of building, you have discovered how to use your heart in any endeavor no matter how simple it may be. Rest assured that others noticed the difference. They perhaps cannot put it in words, but it touched their hearts.
I saw it in the faces of the local builders when they saw a brick laid perfectly and in line… they knew that someone was paying attention to them… that someone cared.
I felt it when someone smoothly tossed me a brick. It was like they wanted to give me something rather than wait for me to take it. I felt their trust in my ability and willingness to work towards the bigger picture. They were no longer just doing their bit.
It was as concrete as the perfectly mixed mortar I placed between the bricks. I could tell that care was taken to mix it to the correct proportions. Concern about making it perfect was there in its grains. It was much more than shoveling sand.
Three weeks of experiencing these small things, nothing ground breaking, but lots of little special moments, all of which add up to a holiday.
But what a holiday!
Seeing the poor, the greedy, the loving, the musical, the dirty, the superficial, the caring, the happy, the wealthy, the drunk, the noisy, people from the Philippines is like seeing humanity in the raw. Even with such a contrast between the haves and have-nots, it is actually easier to the similarities rather than differences between them. In fact it is easier to see the likeness to ourselves. Whenever you experience their generosity amidst poverty, their love over adversity, their pride amongst the garbage of the slums, remember that these people are humans like you, the same strength you see in them is also present in you.
