Training wheels

On Friday morning, I stood, big black marker in hand, in front of 30 recent matriculants. They're part of a programme that will see them spend a year volunteering for an organization in Cape Town. They'll get skills, they'll get connected, and they'll do good while at it. Before they start, they get trained. I help to train them. My session was on experiential learning, and how to take a volunteer experience and learn from it. How to do, to reflect, to learn, to do, to reflect, to learn, to do... We were at the point in the session where I ask the students: so what is this reflection thing anyway?

We talk about what it means to think about an action, to think critically about what happened, and what it means in the context of your life, and your environment. We talk more specifically, about how one thinks; what enables thinking.

Some students like to listen to music, some go for a walk. Some students think aloud by themselves or with friends. Some students meditate, some students pray. Some students sit quietly in the dark, some students like to draw. And some, some students like to drink.
"It helps me clear my mind."
"What does?" I want some clarity.
"Drinking. I drink and then I think clear, it makes me brave."

My mind turns to fuzz. There are several things I don't want to do, chief amongst them is alienate the nodding members of the group.

"So you drink, and it helps you to think. It doesn't make you distracted?"
"No, it makes me focused."
"Ok, and it doesn't make you lose control?"
"No, it makes me brave."
"But what happens when you drink, you don't get into fights?"
"No maybe I'll fight, but still, my mind is clear and brave."

I'm waiting. I don't know for what. For someone else to say something that makes sense, for one of their peers to tell them they're wrong. That they're silly. That they're doing no one any good. They're fresh out of high school, and already dependent on drinking to keep focused, to keep brave.

I start talking about what it might mean to find focus from within. I talk about inner strength, how finding courage from the inside is real courage. They shake their heads, they start to back away.
"Look, I'm not judging you," I say with futility, "I'm not going to stand here and tell you how to live your life when it's a life that I don't live. I just don't think that it's the best way to focus, you know?"
I waver. Desperation creeps in. They remain steadfast.

"I am brave inside, the alcohol just helps me feel it."
"Yes," the man sitting next to the speaker attests, "it helps me feel my strength."

I've strayed into territory wholly unfamiliar, and wholly uncomfortable. I spent my undergraduate years learning about cultural relativity, learning not to judge the life of another, learning that there are different ways to engage with the world. But my memory is hazy now. I turn to the list of "What helps me reflect?" behind me. Music. Walking. Talking. Praying. I try to bring myself to write down "Drinking" but I can't. I write instead, "Doing what I need to do to focus". If I was here long-term, maybe I could have written something else, challenged them harder. But I've got two hours of their lives and then nothing.

The two men mumble to each other. They can see I'm uncomfortable. They can sense that I'm stuck.
"Well," my sensibilities have left me now, "sometimes you don't have a fifty rand to drink, sometimes you don't have money, and then what are you going to do?"
The two men shrug.
"Yeah well, inner strength is free." I end, with a renewed respect for cliches.