Open Your Heart

When I was in college, one of my theater classes was a clowning class.

And no, this wasn't a paint your face silly and wear red noses kind of clown class (though we did eventually graduate to the noses - :) ), it was play. It was free play, and a chance to get in touch with that inner child kind of class.

We played playground games. We sang songs. We danced. We were children.

The point of the class was to open yourself up to anything and everything that life had to offer. The wonder, and the despair.

A lot of our exercises were solo work - a terrifying experience. You, up in front of 20 of your peers, at your absolute most vulnerable. This was when that teetering, tottering, little child came out. But this is also when all the joy, and all the fear came out too.

One of the last bits of our warm up exercise still sticks with me. We'd place our interlaced hands over our breastbone - over our heart...and slowly, slowly, open them up. Making creaking noises, and acting appropriately frightened, we'd open up that old, rusty, case around our heart. We'd open up to anything and everything life had to offer. For better, or for worse.

The thing about working at an acting school in Manhattan, is that studio was the safe space. That one room (5-1A) at 890 Broadway was the space where you could do that. Where you could open yourself up, and you knew that even if bad things happenned, it was never that bad. It was never the end. But you always had to be sure that when you crossed that threshold, out the door, down the human operated elevator, out onto busy Broadway, you had to close back up, or else you'd get eaten alive.

In Peace Corps, we're volunteers, sacrificing, yes, our time, but more importantly, we're sacrificing ourselves. We're sacrificing our talents, our energies, our skills, and our love for other people. We've opened our hearts - for better, and for worse.

One thing any PCV will tell you is that while in PC, the highs are higher, and the lows lower. I think it's because we go through this process so open to experience, so giving, and so completely exhausted of energy and emotion, that we can't help but be significantly affected by the events that happen to us. I think it is especially true for those of us who work with young people here. The lack of mentoring in Azerbaijan, of interest in child development, the fact that adults here don't really nurture youth, necessitates that when we are present with a group of kids, we are there 110%. We give and give and give, because they need it so much. This, at the end of the day, leaves you so tanked, honestly sometimes all you can do is cry.

I was doing yoga the other day, and came to this realization. I could go through my service closed off, and save myself the pain and the frustration. But then I wouldn't be giving. And what we receive isn't all bad - my 5th formers wrote on the blackboard behind my back "BEATIFUL STEPANIE [spelling errors preserved for effect]" - so I'd hate to shut myself off to that too. So I go through this world, open, giving, receiving, vulnerable. Because I have no other choice. And I'd have it no other way.