Taking a step back...

Unlike in the game of Life (Milton Bradley), taking a step back in real life is not always a waste of time. In fact, sometimes a step back will get you on the right path. Such was the case this past weekend at Bradford Woods. Grouped with other Asian leaders at IU, I did not have access to a cellphone, laptop, or any means of communication with the outside world. I know this sounds like the beginning of a cheap, slasher-in-the-woods, Hollywood thriller, but it turned out more like Garden State or the Shawshank Redemption. By which I mean, the experience seemed so perfect that it must have been scripted in a good movie or something. I don't really want to bore you all with the details, but basically we split into 3 groups, and then did leadership-building challenges and activities for a day and a half. These included the name bashing game, the respect game, the reveal-a-paradox-about-yourself game, the Filipino martial art of Wa!, mute communication on a log, an intricate blind maze, a spiderweb, walking across molten lava with 3 wooden planks...and so on. The activities were pretty fun. But my take-home message of our picture-perfect weekend was that people are naturally good. Our group (Team Wa)'s counselor, Carmen, was unbelievably nice. She seemed like an all-powerful elementary school teacher. She had the abilities to grab our attention without raising her voice, to tell us when to stop without putting us down, and to get us to laugh at the world without laughing at people. And when our group was together, we acted as Carmen acted. We shared our feelings, we laughed together, we trusted each other...It was an experience that I can't compare with any other in recent memory. I don't know what I can do with this lesson, but I do want to help spread it somehow. Maybe Chemistry isn't the way to do it. I may have to take another step back and see. Maybe I won't get to Millionaire Estates and collect the 5 extra "Life tiles" at the end. But I might have a better idea where I'm headed.