Returning from a Volunteering Experience
By: Fatima Martinez
Tags: Life Lessons, Outsiders, Adaptation, Volunteering, Lessons Learned

To volunteer takes courage. The first filters are the judgments of people around you, criticism everywhere, advice you never asked, and get questioned if you are the right fit to live something like that. But the reward is priceless.

It pleases all human shapes: personal, spiritual, and creative. Unknown places are discovered, beautiful people are known, and because of what you see and hear, you become an optimist, you find out and confirm that there are more good people in the world, and you are having breakfast with them regularly.

Nature also has a fundamental part of this. These volunteer experiences often happen in a community away from civilization, so you get to know nature at its purest. To get to a village, I had to travel 12 hours on a dirt road, but I will never see a sky so full of stars as the one I witnessed, and the people I shared it with made it more special.

It is easier to become a more patient, loveable, inclusive person. I shaped myself to be a better leader, a woman who accepts and discovers herself and is always open to a new apprenticeship.

Returning wasn’t what I was expecting. I thought it was easy to extend my experience to my day to day life, and I was exposed to these problems:

My friends aren’t that interesting anymore.

When it’s time to go back home, your friends welcome that friend that went away and are expecting you to tell them your stories as it was just a weekend. But you have such a rush and desire to say to them everything in one single dinner. It can be desperate when they ask for details or specifics because you’ll spend more time explaining the context rather than the story itself, like your schedule or the regulations. And, because you have that rush, it’s easy to make the mistake of thinking you have the best stories to share. One might push them away, not intentionally, but that happens and links to the next point.

To feel superior

One of the great benefits a volunteer experience gives for the rest of our lives is the outstanding ability to listen. Therefore, you earn the gift to recognize a good conversation within seconds. Still, it is here where you’ll know if the experience was taken incorrectly or not.

Yes, a volunteer allows you to know other cultures, realities, and the people around you. Yes, that makes you more inclusive. Yes, it also helps mature faster. Buuuut it never makes you better than anyone.

In the beginning, feels like that, but it’s because you haven’t finished adapting to your reality.

To be happy with so much.

The facility to adapt is one of the most extraordinary qualities an affair like this provides.

Re-adaptation is difficult. My biggest dilemma was: I just came back from the best year of my life where I lived with barely the indispensable and I come back to my city, my house, and I don’t know what to do with so much.

My style took around 2 years to come back eventually. Heels were ridiculous for me, make up made no sense, and the outfit of jeans and a t-shirt was my new uniform.

To discover releases a year after

The year I went away was the year Jason Mraz released I’m Yours, and by the time I came back, most men have learned it on the guitar to play the song for their girlfriends. My brother was one of those guys, and he shared with me, very tenderly, that he learned this song.

After pretending I knew what he was talking about, he made me watch the video on YouTube, so I knew because, perhaps, he wasn’t playing well.

I enjoyed the song for the first time. He first pities me and then laughed at me. Pointing me and everything.

You are away, without internet, without electricity, only listening to what the people in their communities hear.

Usually, the mainstream doesn’t make it to these places. Also… Lady Gaga? I knew about her until Bad Romance.

To digest

You’re not a victim, nobody is against you, it’s not that nobody cares: it’s what you have to digest.

You will be wanting to tell everyone about what you lived, why you changed, and why everyone should look at life the way you do. But it’s you who have to listen to them.

The one who feels lost is you; the people around you have been in that normal forever, digest. Learning to link your experiences with your reality.

Re-adaptation could take longer than it is necessary. Still, once you are settled in your reality, the volunteer experience takes another turn, another meaning. One can quickly translate those experiences to where you are now, the answer to the famous question, ¿what will you do with what you’ve learned?