04/06/08
The Peace Corps assigns us the task of being a Change Agent, to work with the village to bring about changes they want. This definition seems straightforward enough until you wonder just what change we are to bring about and how this is to be done.
Most people want and endorse change, but it is usually change for the other person. It is easy to see what others should be doing. Bringing about change is another matter. Our Peace Corps job is somewhat like President Harry S. Truman’s lamentation, “I’m the most powerful person in the world, yet no one does what I want done”.
The changes the villages want can better be described as “stuff”. They want the Peace Corps to help them get things. In my village, they want sewing machines, computers, and a fence for a yet to be built new school. Nowhere in their request for a Peace Corps Volunteer do the villagers ask us to change their behavior, to do anything differently from what they are currently doing.
As a volunteer we see hundreds of behavioral changes that we think should be made. These changes make complete sense to us. Yet we are baffled when the seemingly obvious to us means nothing to others; or even it they are obvious to others, why they do not something about them? It is H. S. T.’s dilemma on a smaller scale.
Frustrations mount as each attempt at instituting behavioral change meets failure. To quote Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady”, “ Why can’t a woman be like a man? Perfect in very way.” The frustration makes one want to scream, become bitter, or quit as some do. Coming to grips with the human paradox of wanting change, but not wanting to change makes you realize your own limitations. You begin to question, is what I am doing here changing anything? Am I simply a vehicle for stuff?
When faced with challenges in the past, I usually look in the mirror. The problem and the solution are many times looking at me. What would I do if someone, anyone, wanted me to change? Especially if I didn’t ask them to be changed or thought they were operating on their agenda, not mine? (Expletives deleted!)
As I toil away each day in my “Peace Corps Garden”, I hope at least one person catches the spark to start his or her own garden to earn money and feed their family. In the meantime, I am learning how to grow and sell all types of vegetables. As to the unused funds I have earned and set aside to help others with their gardens mount, I have decided to built a monument to myself in the middle of the garden with the inscription, “ He came to bring change. He failed at change, but succeeded in selling you vegetables you could have grown for yourself. This memorial was built with those funds.”
Whether we are aware of it or not, we do end up being Change Agents; not in the way the Peace Corps thinks it should happen, or the village hoped it would happened, nor in the way we dreamed it could happen, not even to the people we intended to affect, but this Grand Adventure changes us all. As I witness those Peace Corps leaving at the end of their two years, they seem different than those just arriving. This whale called Samoa may have swallowed them and spit them out transformed. Maybe it is we who return differently to implement the ways we have learned to make of our homes a better place.
The Peace Corps assigns us the task of being a Change Agent, to work with the village to bring about changes they want. This definition seems straightforward enough until you wonder just what change we are to bring about and how this is to be done.
Most people want and endorse change, but it is usually change for the other person. It is easy to see what others should be doing. Bringing about change is another matter. Our Peace Corps job is somewhat like President Harry S. Truman’s lamentation, “I’m the most powerful person in the world, yet no one does what I want done”.
The changes the villages want can better be described as “stuff”. They want the Peace Corps to help them get things. In my village, they want sewing machines, computers, and a fence for a yet to be built new school. Nowhere in their request for a Peace Corps Volunteer do the villagers ask us to change their behavior, to do anything differently from what they are currently doing.
As a volunteer we see hundreds of behavioral changes that we think should be made. These changes make complete sense to us. Yet we are baffled when the seemingly obvious to us means nothing to others; or even it they are obvious to others, why they do not something about them? It is H. S. T.’s dilemma on a smaller scale.
Frustrations mount as each attempt at instituting behavioral change meets failure. To quote Henry Higgins in “My Fair Lady”, “ Why can’t a woman be like a man? Perfect in very way.” The frustration makes one want to scream, become bitter, or quit as some do. Coming to grips with the human paradox of wanting change, but not wanting to change makes you realize your own limitations. You begin to question, is what I am doing here changing anything? Am I simply a vehicle for stuff?
When faced with challenges in the past, I usually look in the mirror. The problem and the solution are many times looking at me. What would I do if someone, anyone, wanted me to change? Especially if I didn’t ask them to be changed or thought they were operating on their agenda, not mine? (Expletives deleted!)
As I toil away each day in my “Peace Corps Garden”, I hope at least one person catches the spark to start his or her own garden to earn money and feed their family. In the meantime, I am learning how to grow and sell all types of vegetables. As to the unused funds I have earned and set aside to help others with their gardens mount, I have decided to built a monument to myself in the middle of the garden with the inscription, “ He came to bring change. He failed at change, but succeeded in selling you vegetables you could have grown for yourself. This memorial was built with those funds.”
Whether we are aware of it or not, we do end up being Change Agents; not in the way the Peace Corps thinks it should happen, or the village hoped it would happened, nor in the way we dreamed it could happen, not even to the people we intended to affect, but this Grand Adventure changes us all. As I witness those Peace Corps leaving at the end of their two years, they seem different than those just arriving. This whale called Samoa may have swallowed them and spit them out transformed. Maybe it is we who return differently to implement the ways we have learned to make of our homes a better place.
3 comments:
Nick you are awesome! That entry was so profound. You get it, and you are doing everything your suppose to be doing there. Enjoy your garden, plant your food, just be! Screw the other stuff it's not important. Embrace who your becoming because in the end welcoming that new person back into that old environment is gonna be what it was all about. It will be challeging, but remarkable none the less. I miss talking with you! I'm so glad you use this blog to share your thoughts. And yes, put that plack in the middle of the garden. For it deserves to be there! Hi Mary:)
Safiya
The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.
Charles Swindoll
When I read your entry, I thought of this quote. You could be lamenting, griping, complaining, but instead you are philosophical, and trying to be positive. Bravo.
Two months ago I came back from a trip and had decided I neeed to make a change in my life. Namely my career. I made a concious effort to ask for change on a consious and subconsious level. I felt I put myself out there and opened up myself to it all. The result has been the craziest time two months of my life. I received multiple job offers, had a friend die, found my wife asking me about the fundamental stregth of our relationship, watched her start a career, put our children in preschool, ended 9 years at my old job, watched my father quit smoking after almost 50 years, realized I need to do the same, and experienced all of the stress and emotions that come with these things....and more.
It's been a powerful lesson as I have realized I am also my own agent of change, as we all are. We all want change but we only want 1 or 2 things to change in our life and can be blindsided by the wave of change that comes. I found within all of that came what I asked for but also much more...good and bad. But it is OK since in the end I feel I am a little wiser and I got what I asked for. Their is no dissection of life to perturb a single change. If we want change it comes in a whole package and we asked for it. Unfortunatley most of us are afraid of the whole package and get frustrated when we can't get just that one thing...and in the end refuse to ask for the package....but that is the only way it comes.
thank you for your blog!
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