The elusive quest for significance

Man, you guys are all so super-smart. I must confess I find it a bit intimidating at times. Formerly, I was used to being the smart one in most of the contexts in which I found myself - strange as it may sound. And I don't like being in situations where everyone is better at something than me. I like to avoid such situations. Not that I always have to be the best, but you know. I won't attempt to deny it coz it's true.

This is all part of a general trend involving me discovering more and more, as I discover more and more about the world, how insignificant I and my slight achievements really are. Sad but true. I have some talents, but I do not have genius. I will probably have little influence in the wider world beyond my circle of acquaintance. I will be forgotten within a generation or two of my death. That's the way it goes.

Kelly James Clark, whose book I have just finished reading, talks about these things, in his discussion of the creation of the self. He notes that we are brought into the world surrounded by abundant evidence that we must be the most important person in the world - within the domestic sphere that is the sum total of our experience, we are, as infants, right at the centre, with our parents satisfying our every whim. We are sheltered from any awareness of the apathetic, even hostile, outside world, the knowledge of which is too frightening for us to cope with except by learning it gradually as we grow up.

We learn of our littleness in stages. Siblings arrive and we must share our parents' attention with others; we meet other kids and find we are but one of many, and have to assert ourselves in this wider context; we try to stay on top through school, in whatever niche we can find for ourselves (academic success, popularity, sport etc.), only to find, on leaving, that the competition only gets steeper as we go on. Perhaps we find we are only average in our tertiary studies; or we excel as undergraduates, and even in postgrad, but soon find ourselves but one of many super-smart professors in our field around the world, and unable to make an impact in that sphere.

I don't think it will be my lot to be great at anything. I lack the ambition, even if I do have the skill. Perhaps all I am here to do (if I may use that terminology) is love people, be a friend and family member, drive people round the place, bake cookies, make the odd wise-crack and laugh heartily at everyone else's, help people toss around their ideas as they search for their own place in the world, and basically try to make people's lives more enjoyable if I can. Perhaps I will be able to facilitate the growth of others in various ways. Perhaps I will have the privilege of serving someone great. That will be enough for me. At least I think so. Rebuke me if you think I'm going astray here.

Thailand

Okay so it's now 3 weeks since I got back - high time I made some attempt at posting about my trip, for those who are interested.

I shall make a start today with What We Did, and hopefully follow up later with a TOFs and Impressions post. If you got the emails while we were away or have talked much with me since I got back, there probably won't be much in here that's new to you.

The team, first of all, consisted of Ginette (formerly a missionary in Thailand, whom many of you will have heard speaking at CU), her friend Elizabeth, and 5 of us younguns from my youth group. The 5 of us were all good friends beforehand, everyone got along with everyone without the slightest problem, and all of us had a lot of fun on the whole.

There were three main reasons for us going:
1 - to visit schools and put on programs that helped introduce Christianity to the kids there.
2 - to encourage the pastors and missionaries we were working with, who are struggling pretty hard.
3 - to experience something different to our own culture, and thereby learn more about ourselves, and be stretched, as well as learning about God and about the world, and possibly finding out whether we are cut out to be missionaries ourselves.

The first part was fairly straightforward, though certainly not without its challenges. We had a little cultural program thing put together, with Maori songs and little skits and such, Rachael and I played a bit of jazz (yay), and we also did lots of action songs and fun stuff, which the kids really enjoyed. Our musical/performance abilities as a group were not up to much, but we did what we could. At some places they didn't want any religious content, just a cultural show, but we usually managed to slip something in there. Others didn't mind, and one place actually asked us to do an hour's religious instruction!

After the little show we generally had to do some English teaching, which was Hard Work. Sometimes we had to stand up in front of a class, other times we had 'small groups', usually consisting of 30-40 kids to one of us. Having had no training, we basically just had to wing it, and do whatever came into our heads. We mostly played games and things, but even that is pretty hard, sometimes really impossible, when we didn't speak Thai and they didn't have much English, and we couldn't explain how to play. It took me about a week after coming home to get out of the habit of doing actions to everything I say, and using really simple words all the time. But we never had to do more than an hour at a time with any one group, so we found ways to fill in the time.

So there was really nothing of high quality that we were able to do, I'm afraid, but the teachers were always thrilled to have native speakers come to their schools anyway, and to have westerners on the premises. It's good for their public profile or something. Hence they were always taking photos, which Ginette said would very likely be proudly displayed for quite some time. And we were treated like celebrities, by both the kids and the teachers. The Thai love ceremony, and we were always very heartily welcomed, and most embarassingly placed on the seats of honour, and supplied with a constant stream of super-sweet coffee, and afterwards we were always given a fantastic lunch (mmm, Thai food :)). And the kids would follow us round, ask for autographs and email addresses, ask us to take their photo, and STARE. Yeah, we got stared at a lot. Took some getting used to. I think we all got marriage proposals at some point or another, at the high schools, and got told we were very beautiful and things - possibly because that was about the extent of their English vocabulary. One boy asked Caleb to be his girlfriend, which freaked him out somewhat. There are quite a lot of cross-dressing teenage boys over there. Sort of one in every class or so. Interesting.

So given that none of what we did was particularly high quality, on a surface level we 'achieved' very little, if anything. But all that stuff was really just a tool for achieving other things that were more important. This is where Goal #2 comes in, because through our being there at all, rather than through what we did as such, we were able to open doors for the pastors we were working with, which will hopefully lead on to many further opportunities for them to reach out to people, in places where they haven't previously been able to. In Thailand, everything's about who you know, so because these pastors were associated with us, they were able to get their foot in the door, and get known a bit themselves. And I'm sure they will make use of the contacts - they're very conscientious people, these Thai pastors.

There were other things that worked in similar ways. In Lopburi, where we spent the second week, we were taking English classes in the evenings at the church for anyone that wanted to come, kind of in association with the youth group they have there. People brought their friends, and because it was happening every night, we all got to know each other a bit, which was really nice, and I think the group got itself a bit more established. We had lots of fun with those kids. They were mostly around 15-17, and didn't have much English, but we managed to find lots of ways to do things together that didn't involve talking, like playing sport and playing music, and we spent the whole of the Saturday and most of Sunday with them. So I guess we were able to be a means of drawing the group together.

I think I'll save Goal #3 for the TOFs post; otherwise I'll never get this finished for a start :) Must get to bed.