As human, communication is essential in our lives. Without communication, we cannot understand each other, cannot live in harmony, or even in some ways, we won’t be at peace.
We communicate in many ways like talking, reading, listening to news, or just a simple hand and/or body gestures and language. Funny but it seems like our life is black without the touch of the color of other people’s simple/complex life. I do believe in a saying that “No Man is an island”. It’s a very common quote running for how many ages, but really has a big point. We need other people, especially those ones who are dear to us, not because we want them to complete us, but because to put their colors in our grayish world. In that way, we will not be seeing only one color in our “own” world, but different colors, it might not be beautifully painted, at least is has colors that will attract our iris to come take a look of it. We cannot live alone in an island where we are the only one to take care of it, use it, and love it. It’s boring, isn’t it? Even God created Eve from the ribs of Adam to let him feel he is not alone and to let him feel that, not only God Himself, there will also be other human being who will love him though not as much as God does. And that made me think that human, is not at all selfish, even when other people say they are.
We communicate in many ways like talking, reading, listening to news, or just a simple hand and/or body gestures and language. Funny but it seems like our life is black without the touch of the color of other people’s simple/complex life. I do believe in a saying that “No Man is an island”. It’s a very common quote running for how many ages, but really has a big point. We need other people, especially those ones who are dear to us, not because we want them to complete us, but because to put their colors in our grayish world. In that way, we will not be seeing only one color in our “own” world, but different colors, it might not be beautifully painted, at least is has colors that will attract our iris to come take a look of it. We cannot live alone in an island where we are the only one to take care of it, use it, and love it. It’s boring, isn’t it? Even God created Eve from the ribs of Adam to let him feel he is not alone and to let him feel that, not only God Himself, there will also be other human being who will love him though not as much as God does. And that made me think that human, is not at all selfish, even when other people say they are.
Gifted are those who effectively communicate with one another. Those who can easily say what they really feel and think even without hurting other people’s ego, those who can elaborate or express well who they are inside without embarrassing their fellow. How we communicate has everything to do with its effectiveness.
To acquire an effective interpersonal relationship, we are required to have a seminar/workshop that is mainly focused on team building. It is one of the requirements of our Field Trip and Seminars course.
It was Monday, dated July 20, 2015 when the whole day event was held at our university’s social hall. I belonged to the batch 1 of the class, since we are eighty one students in all and we have to take the seminar by batch, second batch took the seminar at the university’s dormitory function room. I was late then at the time of logging in, because our names were listed and we have to register ourselves and settle down, but I still managed myself. Lucky enough, they were not yet starting the opening prayer and singing the national anthem. I took a chair and took my seat at the left side, second to the person who’s sitting beside me at the aisle of the venue. Our facilitator was then talking and orienting us about the later event.
We were grouped into 5 or more in our first activity. We were tasked to answer three questions which I honestly can’t remember the exact phrases, but it goes like these, “What do you expect in this activity?”, “What can you contribute in this activity?”, and “what do you feel about this activity?”. There were three boys and four girls in our group, which includes me. We shared our ideas about the activity, after that we wrote it on the Manila paper. We wrote there that we expected the activity to be fun, challenging, help us learn how to build our trust in each of us in there, and help us to come out from our nutshell; we can contribute cooperation, participation and, of course, our presence (haha!); we all agreed that we are all determined to see what we can learn from the activities. Honestly, I was a bit conscious about how will I respond to the following activities of such event.
After that activity, our facilitator gave us a paper with a drawing in it, many people in different parts of the tree. She asked us who are we on that tree. I actually find it amusing, because before I decided who I was on that tree, I already found myself choosing those two older people sitting together at the higher branch of the tree. I chose those two people not because I already literally have a partner in life, as currently I’m enjoying the blessedness of being single and don’t have the apple-of-my-eye yet, but because for me, it was something about what am I, who am I, and who am I with, in this journey of life. That time, I thought about how God guided me in this journey. And for me, the old but young-at-heart man beside the young-at-heart woman is God. It was appealing to me because it’s telling me that, I’ve grown enough for me to realize that I’ve struggled enough in this life, and with those struggles in life, I have my family, few important relatives, and all of my few but caring friends and cousins beside me, most of all, I have God with me. This life has ups and downs, as it is to other people, but at the end of the day, it will only be a question of ‘how do you THINK was your day today?’. It’s all about how we perceive things that we became a person who we are. We were grouped then to share why we chose the particular part of the picture. I and my group mates did share our part of the activity. After a couple of minutes, our facilitator chose a representative to present the thoughts of our group. She, our facilitator, even asked us what we have learned and realized out from the activity. The picture actually made me think a couple of times. I actually thought that we are all those people in the different parts of the tree. There are times that we became emotional, a leader, spiritually molded/guided/driven, chose ourselves to be alone sometimes, chose to find ourselves enjoying and smiling even when we are actually struggling, struggling so hard to achieve something, and sometimes, humbled ourselves when we know we are down spirited. Luckily, that thought was presented by a girl, with a name I don’t really exactly knew but with a face I always soulfully noticed. I realized there is a girl, who is deeper than me, and can actually share her words effectively. We have the same thoughts, and knowing that, I found myself painting a smile on my face.
After that, we had a break and were told to eat our morning snacks. We were actually filled with joyous hearts of what we heard. We ate our snack and I found myself satisfied, knowing that the others were not because they still want more. While eating, there is one of us who voluntarily performed just to break the cold barrier, because all of us were eating and probably no one would take a time to leave their foods and seats just to entertain the others. After the eating-our-snacks time, we proceed to the last activity of the morning.
The last two activities of the morning were reading what was written on the bond paper entitled “Consideration of Personhood” and drawing. Our facilitator made us think about the person next to us, what we think about them and who actually they are in their own world/life; that he’s actually taking his part of making history; that he’s not living for himself but also for his family, for those dear to him and for me. Sometimes it made me think that I easily judge people in my mind and sometimes I blatantly say unforgivable things when I’m angry or frustrated. Then I realized that our words are tremendous impression to anyone, that they might be hurt, and once we said it; it can never be taken back. We might have known them physically, but not their story. So we must be careful of what we are going to say. Next we were asked to draw our family dinner. I was blanked. I was trying to compose myself. I took a hard time trying to picture out our family dinner. That time I didn’t know what I’m going to do. I was afraid, afraid that they might know some private things about me, and that what would they feel about me. I’m a deep person, in a sense that, I care too much about the feelings of others. I have trust issues. Yes, I talk a lot, I laugh and smile a lot, and even if it seems funny to know that I was the one who was actually encouraging my group mates to talk about themselves, still deep inside of me I never easily give my trust to a person, and when I do, I never gave it that much. I do tell other people about me, but those things are the shallow things about me. I do have many friends and few ‘closer’ friends as I quote it, because they are the only ones whom I knew could understand me and would want to understand me.
My drawing was a drawing of a first grader student in primary years. I was frustrated and disappointed of myself. It was because I was trying to suppress the emotions and thoughts that I really wanted to go out, that I found my drawing frustrating. The symbols were not symbols about my family anymore; it was about the appearance of their aura that seems to me some sort of weird thing for other people, especially to my classmates. I did thought about that. But as my imagination goes too far, what I only wanted at that moment was to picture out our auras as family in a dinner table. We did eat together as family before mama left us. A heartbreaking past that a child of a broken family would want to fold and keep on the bottom inside her closet, that made me asked myself “why do I have to do this?”. Reminiscing, I recalled those moments that we ate what were the foods being served in front of us, not talking or anything, just eating. My memory fails to remember our family talking about funny or happy things over dinner. What we talked about was the expenses of our school projects, the expenses of about everything. It was sort of frustrating for me to realize that my parents had separated because of monetary issues. Money is a great burden to bear when we make it like a God ruling our lives. I told myself that when I will have my own family later in life, if God allows, I will never take up monetary issues over meals. I gave papa a symbol or an aura of up and down arrows because he’s a strict but loving person, it’s just that, he doesn’t know how to show his love. He doesn’t know how to say the important i-love-you words to his children. Maybe he believes that action speaks louder than words. Though he’s not saying about it, I can feel it. I can sense it reading/listening between his long sermons every day. I’m actually a feeler, I feel things. I easily feel auras. I don’t know why I feel too much. I even feel people do shady things about me or to me. I gave mama a red and black color of a broken heart. She was my hero in my primary years, my buddy, soul mate, and confidante. I told her about everything. But it has changed when I knew about what she had done to papa. For now, Mama has another family, and that I knew. I knew everything about my family’s detailed story because I was the eldest of the seven siblings and gifted I am as my mother told me I already understood even the small talks they were talking as young as 5 I was. I gave different colors and shades to my brothers and sister as they are on our family dinner. After having a stressful drawing, we were asked to group by threes. Then we were told to share to our group mates about our drawing. Amusement consumed me when I found their drawings detailed and meaningful. I was again disappointed of what I had drawn. Maybe it was because I have so many things running in my head that I can’t focus on what I’m currently doing at that time and as a result, I had a frustrating picture of our family dinner. My group mates actually explained their drawing very, very well, that I envy them. I’m teary-eyed when I thought I have to explain to my group about my drawing knowing that reminiscing those unfortunate past of our family gives me a broken hearted feeling. I was the last to explain mine, and I was hoping then that they understood what I was telling them. Because it seemed to me that I was not myself while speaking. My being was kind of taken and used by someone. After that, we posted our drawing at the back part of the hall. Embarrassment had eaten me, owing to the fact that all of them could see what I had drawn.
After that strenuous activity we had a lunch break. I stayed at the social hall; never had an appetite to eat my lunch, I only ate the leftover of my morning snacks. After waiting of about an hour, the seminar resumed. We were grouped by seven or more when the activity started three minutes past one. We called it “Seer/Runner/Doer activity”. That was all about team building. The Seer will look at the picture and describe it to the Runner, and then the Runner will run to his group and tell them, the Doers will do the drawing of the describe picture. Our group was unfortunately the last but not the least group (haha!), last because I felt our drawing was the last, not the least because we also had the essence of working as a team, it’s just that it is not that efficient and effective. We did our brainstorming part. Each of our team participated, gave their ideas and thoughts, and each of us acknowledges one another’s opinion. We might have missed some small details that outdid the whole work and the result might be frustrating, but I am happy and satisfied because over all, each of us gave our hearts in there, we really did.
Afterwards, we ate our afternoon snacks and then proceeded to the next activity. We danced the primary years’ famous “Fruit salad” and “Chicken” dance. We were alive then. After dancing, I found myself listening to the discussion of our facilitator about teamwork and leadership, and was actually thinking its significance for our incoming field trip and seminars.
After all of the tiring, loosening, fun and splendid activities, we took an oath to Our Father God in Heaven about the things that I will start, continue and stop doing, and then we recapped and evaluated our facilitator that day. We took pictures together with our facilitator and as a batch in the whole class.
I took time to ponder things. I realized that, before we work with others in a team, we must have trust. Trust is required in a good communication; it is the basis of an open communication of one another. If we trust enough, we can communicate effectively. We have to give trust not only to those who are we communicating, but also for ourselves to efficiently express and talk freely from the heart what we really think about. We can’t work with other people if we can’t communicate with the ‘innermost being’ within us. And working as a team is important in our Field Trip and seminars, because we will face the world together, we will have fun together, and we will share those unforgettable moments together. And maybe, together as one, we will victoriously win over the battles in life. Together we moved. God bless us all. God’s with us.
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