In the summer of 2019, I went backpacking down the Virginian Appalachian Trail—and it was painful. Day after day after day, after swatting away bugs through the night, after an ungenerous breakfast and the promise of a 16-mile day ahead, I sweated and ached and endured more than I ever had before. And yet, an inexplicable feeling of joy washed over me as I crested a hill far steeper than I thought, seeing the Blue Ridge Mountains laid out before me like a painting. I remember 1AM conversations under the stars fueled by intense mutual earnestness, laughing more deeply than I ever had at stupid jokes.
On some subconscious level, I wanted to return to that bliss—and so this past summer, I decided to try out camp counseling. As kids arrived, I had the panicked realization: “I’m responsible for them. I’m the person they have to turn to in moments of need…and I’m seventeen.” But that summer, I sang Party In The U.S.A. like an idiot, burst with pride when my kid finally hit the target with his bow-and-arrow, and saw kids through intense homesickness. Responsibility built close connection and fostered a community where, even if just for a week, everything felt manageable and present, and I was free.
There’s something to be said about the power of those kinds of moments: lived fully and freely in a present that actually feels present, unencumbered by past regrets or future anxieties. For me at least, those moments feel more alive than any other, somehow more real or more true. They’ve been so profoundly transformative for me that their absence feels like regression—like I’m worse off, or missing something vital. As I’d return to the comparatively-boring “real world”, it became so easy to feel like I was only going through the motions, missing the “spark” that made counseling or hiking so special.
But while it’s easy to despair when those moments are distant and those feelings fade, though, I’ve realized that there wasn’t really anything special about those moments. There’s no fundamental difference between the “motions” of camp counseling versus school—both involve a ton of work and responsibility, both were full of moments from frustrating to joyous. The difference was the way in which I approached them, with expectations of either serendipitous joy or mindless repetition. To let yourself be struck by that joy and be brought into that community, you need to be open to it in the first place.
I’ve learned to focus on incorporating that openness into my life, my leadership, and my relationships with others. Those moments of wide-open joy can be searched for and brought into once-mundane parts of life—whether that’s at school or at home, in a classroom or out with friends or on a trail. In a world where so much feels so distant, where we’re constantly preoccupied with events past or yet-to-be, it’s important to remember that presentness can be a breath of fresh air, bringing us to places where responsibility need not always be a burden, nor empathy a handicap.