I wish that I could draw you a picture. An abstract muddle would please me. I could shout "Ha! You don't understand!". My thoughts and feelings on paper, and you don't understand. See?
Perhaps not. Not to worry. I doubt that rewards would be reaped anyway, just deflation. Am I a more happy or a more sad person?
Darlene: "Mary, Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?"
Me: "With silver bells and cockle shells,
And pretty maids all in a row."
That's how my supervisor, Darlene, and I dialogue. That's how she gets her kicks. And I'm cool with that, I can laugh too. The people who work in my office like to laugh, and I like that. It's a good way to be.
It took me a while to feel like I fit in somewhere in my workplace, in the beginning. But I feel like that now. However, there is only a week remaining. But I think that I was supposed to have gone on a journey, and grown, and I did. The Congressman's office is filled with positive, fun, vocal, strong characters who are wonderful to work with. In such an atmosphere, I really want to be a team-player, I enjoy it.
So, how have I grown? Meeting Senator Leahy, and Senator Clinton, and Mark Shields, and the great number of others, and taking on board what they had to say, has been extremely interesting. Exposure to such people is a privilege, and THEIR encouragement is wonderful. But that exposure is not the primary reason for my growth. My time with the 25 Irish and 7 South African interns is the reason.
The state of our island, north and south, is a much more real issue to me than it was six weeks ago. I am one thousand times more aware. And that is one thousand times a good thing. Coming from South of the border, all I brought with me were the romantic, mis-guided stale views of yesterday. I was confronted with views which I would have regarded as opposite to mine, endangering to mine. But the more you hear, the more you see. Effort and willingness are required. I very much wanted the team come together, to unite. But, at first, I couldn't see how. However it is that we look at each other, the differences are the most immediately striking. Sometimes differences are intriguing, and encourage further conversation, so that the similarities are eventually arrived at. Sometimes, we perceive differences as dangerous, and never get past that.
I didn't know where to begin with the differences. And without the program bringing us together all the time in the beginning, their choice, not necessarily ours, I would almost certainly never have gotten past that. I would have just have had my assumptions cemented into beliefs - yes, the things which separate us are deep and wide. But WIP got me, us I hope, past that. The constant dialogue, and the questions which the program confronted us with, had surprising results. The views of others, so foreign to me, actually sounded quite familiar. Like something I might say. Surprise!
There are still a few people who I don't know personally, who I speak less intimately with than I do with those I've connected more readily with. But even so, I am more relaxed and more comfortable and more familiar with them than I was before. They are part of my world now, and they weren't before. There are more kinds in my world now, with backgrounds different from mine, than there were before WIP. I value individuals more now than I did before. My starting point with someone new is now from a place which seeks to find connections, and not from a place where I'm willing to be dissuaded by differences at the first hurdle. And thanks to WIP this has not just happened with my Irish friends, but with my South African friends also.
So I will savour my remaining time here, and allow the taste to linger.
