Loving This World

“There is only one question: how to love this world.” ~ Mary Oliver

The Universe delivered this line to me on Tuesday night. The epic past 10 days of planning and facilitating school and family events had officially drawn to a close. But my mind kept replaying the events, especially Saturday’s Summer Camp Fair. 

That Saturday morning blossomed bright and sunny, a weather gift I was thankful for when navigating untraveled roads to the location, which turned out to be a gigantic high school whose green lawns were also hosting early morning soccer games.  It took a fellow coworker and I several trips to and from the car (and an emergency run to Target) to finally get our Carnegie Center table ready for business.

During my quick trips out and back to the table, I snuck peaks at the other present organizations. There was a princess camp, a summer outside adventure camp, a pottery camp, even a bowling camp, and this was just the left side entrance to a long, long hallway. Each one had set up an enticing activity to attract kids and thus, their parents. The princess camp boasted a tiara making station. The bowling camp transformed the hallway leading to the bathroom into a little bowling alley. The pottery camp, of course, provided visitors with the opportunity to make their own little pots and whatever whimsical creature your heart desired.

Carnegie used the old trick of attracting people with free food. We had a build your own trail mix buffet consisting of snack classics such as goldfish, cheerios, miniature marshmallows, M&Ms, golden grahams cereal, and raisins.

Instead of offering information to parents about Carnegie’s summer camps, I policed the trail mix station. I burned off a week’s worth of calories jutting back and forth to replenish the emptying bowels, all the while smiling and greeting parents, who skeptically peered at our summer camp board.

This little buffet quickly turned into a big mess as children poured half the bowl’s contents into their small sandwich bags. Goldfish went flying. A grouchy little boy sneezed into the cheerios. The M&Ms appeared to have the lowest survival rate: five kids and the bowl was swiped clean.

Some parents (my favorite) supervised and helped their children, gently reminding them to take small amounts and save the goodies for others. There were the parents who would take this activity as a moment to excuse themselves from parenting, indulging in a still moment before being back on parent duty. There were the parents who helped themselves to the food, not once, but sometimes coming back to refill their baggies two more times during the course of the day.

At the beginning, when the first storm of kids arrived like hungry seagulls eager to grab that handful of goldfish or M&Ms, I panicked. I wanted control, order, and a damn simple “please and thank you.”

I was overwhelmed by the amount of people in the crammed hallway. In crowds, my people watching and natural empathetic nature make me an energetic sponge - I absorb the feelings emanating from the people around me. I was way too plugged into the mother scolding her toddler son for kicking her. I felt pangs of pity for the lone booth representative who hadn’t gotten the memo about providing a kid’s activity to lure over parents and thus, he desperately pressed fliers into the hands of passing parents.

Big crowds drain me. This one was draining me fast. I was becoming ungrounded, reactionary and taking things a bit too personally.

Acknowledging my sensitivity to the crowd and to the families around me brought me ease. I felt a sudden sense of calm as I consciously decided to become the observer, not the reactor, to the scene around me.

From this place of detached awareness, I was able to focus on my job at hand (replenishing the trail mix bowls), and made it a point to acknowledge and greet child coming through the trail mix line. Some were happy larks, others shy, some plain old grouchy, and they were all perfect in their present expressions. If kids and adults put in a very generous amount of food in their plastic baggies, I let it go. For all I know, it could be their only snack of the day. If I felt myself becoming reactionary, I took a deep breath. Surrender and go with the flow.

The outreach fair became a yoga practice. It was a fast-paced four hours that demanded that I be present and professional. At the end of the fair, I wasn’t exhausted, like I typically would have been at the end of a long, extraverted jaunt. My heart center wasn’t bogged down emotions that were not my own. I felt energetically intact.

Staying present and accepting the world around me, instead of fighting it, or judging it, brought me ease and allowed me to fully be. By fully being, I could operate as my best and most capable self, serving my own well-being and tending to those around me.

How to love this world.

As an idea person, I tend to see the world for what it could be – a world where summer camps are easily available to all kids, no worries about cost and accessibility. If I get too wrapped up in seeing what’s wrong with the world and keep focusing on an idealistic vision, I become bitter and blind to the reality around me.

I’m still learning about Love: how to love others, myself, this world. Acceptance is key for me, and my grander relationship with the world circles back to the relationship I have with myself. I can begin to love the world in all its beauty and ugliness by recognizing the meanness and lightness that dwells within me.

 Loving this world means accepting it in all of its rawness, from the kid who sneezed in the Cheerios to the older brother who so patiently helped his younger sister create the perfect trail mix bag.

There is only question. There are a multitude of answers. This is only one thought piece. I’m grateful to Mary Oliver for providing me with a poetic line to meditate on, it will be accompanying me, along with the trail mix buffet, to many a more outreach fair.