Understanding, helping others, grass-roots, educating the youth, diversity, intercultural dialogue. Those are just some of the buzzwords that have constantly been ringing in my ear these past couple of days at the conference. Whether it is from a conversation I had with a community developer in Kenya over lunch about the importance of intercultural understanding between tribes at war with each other in the county. Or a panel discussion about the western-Muslim relations 10 years after 9/11. The point being this conference has constantly exposed me to countless, varying forms of social work in all its forms which is absolutely heart warming, amongst many other things. The way I would describe it, in the simplest form, it is an aggregation of people who CARE! And are doing something about it.
That is what I hear, what I SEE is passion and love. The community activists all seem to love what they are doing, from talking with a Spanish activist Jose he said (in reaction to what he saw from emotionally charged dialogue and empathy between PSU students and students from Gaza) “it keeps you alive”. That to me is the definition of feeling passionate towards something, it keeps you not only doing it, but gives you a larger purpose on earth.
That love and compassion does not stop here at all. I see a basic love for humanity! As simple as that sounds, but I don’t how else to describe other than it is so real and alive here. This forum brings all these lively organizations, groups, and projects that have so much life and positive energy and brings it all together in one place, so now we a common love for humanity and a need to repair it. Seeing that does a lot to me; keeps me going with the work that I do, validating my work, and on a very deep level keeping me alive. That final point however is a blog all by itself
As one can tell from reading this blog, this has been a very emotional and deep experience in which I have gotten a lot and more importantly felt a lot. So with that said I am leaving a lot of emotions and events here that I have not discussed, which I hope to express and explore in later blogs. As for now I need to catch up on some much needed sleep and perhaps increase on that 5-hour average of sleep per day.