The Roots Of VolunTourism Are Relational
I went to the grocery for an item this weekend and took my place in the “15-items-or-less” queue. The woman in front of me noted the singular item in my hand and asked if I would like to proceed ahead of her. An intuitive hunch intervened, along with a smile and a short response of, “I am happy to wait.” And indeed I was.
What I could not have known at the time was that a story rooted in the relational was set to unfold before my observation and wonderment.
The clerk, a fifty-something gentleman checking out the ladies – - an elderly mother/noticeably younger daughter duo – - in front of me, began to relate the story of his own personal challenge – a stage four cancer diagnosis. As the story unfolded, I watched the elderly woman ever so closely. Her eyes began to sparkle, her mouth began to take shape at the corners and her hand extended to the cheek of the man standing before her. She beamed all the love of her heart and patted his cheek and neck. She did this several times during the course of the interaction.
“John” (not his real name) shared tidbits with bated breath, including the saga of a co-worker who recently lost her father a mere month following a similar, stage four diagnosis. “John” was a large man, but he had lost twenty-five pounds and was making every effort to change his lifestyle and eating habits. Most of all, he was sharing his life challenge and needed ears to hear it, to know his story. The elderly woman listened with her eyes and spoke with her heart.
Whether “John” lives another second, minute, hour, day, week, or month longer than today, he was served through an exchange that took, perhaps, ten minutes, but was eternal in its expression of the need-and-compassionate-response tandem. Like so much of what service truly is, it had nothing to do with a measurable, transactional function, yet everything to do with the spontaneity of interest in the well-being of another – the relational.
If you are not “getting something” out of your VolunTourism journeys, then you may want to reflect on whether you are approaching it from a transactional perspective, for the relational is constantly aware of just how much “getting” is accruing in your receipts-from-service bank account. If you are wondering when the house will be built, the road will be constructed, the community center will be refurbished, or the bridge will span the waterway, then you may want to take a moment to stand in line and count how many “missed” opportunities to be of service in a relational manner have passed you by.
Oh sure, you’re thinking about the “sustainability” of your VolunTourism activities, right?
Well, now that Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” TV-series is on Hulu, you might want to rethink that sustainability ploy. Carl does a masterful job of helping us put things into perspective as it pertains to the relational aspect of cosmic-type things. As long as sustainability is tallied on a transactional basis, we will continue to miss this point. Should we decide to make sustainability relational, however, we may see just how “sustainable” VolunTourism truly is over the long haul.
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Cheers! Sandra. R.
I’m putting a link to this Post on our own Blog. Nice.
Something similar happened to me just a few days ago and I wrote about it on our Blog. http://blog.geovisions.org/geovisions-blog/bid/25258/The-Responsibility-Of-Language
Anyway…I loved your post.
Randy