Humans mark time with milestones, markers, achievements, and the 'I did that' moments. I've met the 200 hour commitment I made when I became a crisis counselor on Crisis Text Line. (First convo 3/5/20) Whoo?
The idea of time as stand alone achievement falls short for me. It fails to measure what occurred within me, outside of me, and in my universe.
Time is motion and movement. Think the sun, the earth, the moon they preform a ballroom dance in the firmament. Doing more than just move and mark time. That choreographed ballet creates massive gravitational pulls that serve as surrogate markers for time yet gives deep meaning to time. Sunrise. Sunset. High tides low tides. Hot and cold.
My 200 hours, guided me though an equally massive solar system of feels, knowledge, and self-awareness. Not to mention community, meaning, and connections. Each with their own gravitational pull on life largely frozen in the amber of loss and unrelenting grief. But, in their own right markers of time.
To determine the full measure of these 200 hours entails a fierce and searching inventory of all conversations, notable conversations, community, and connections. Each item deserves its own inventory and a full measure of its gradational pull on me and me on them. Overthink much? You should be in my head. A hall of mirrors. Yet I see clearly a great advancing of my humanity.
In all fairness to myself I will apply this wisdom: Kubrick “Sometimes the truth of a thing is not in the think of it but the feel of it.” I feel I learned much about me because I did for others who were in need.
During my final 10 hours there has been a clarity of sorts. The retrospective elements must be examined and measured because you cannot step into tomorrow without yesterday.
It feels like I’ve looked up from the dashboard of the car I'm learning to drive and see the horizon.This is not de novo. Part of it is the article on the Pandemic and Motivation specifically intrinsic motivation. The second element of clarity are the voices I hear. (It’s okay to judge me) It seems I'm on the same radio frequency as the CTL community et. al. I hear what I couldn’t see before. What it means to become more human. It’s amazing, 200 was a magical number for constructivist learning. Or perhaps I'm just slow.