All service projects come with both a great personal reward as well as a reward to the people you are serving. However, when assisting others, the reward also comes with a great amount of both responsibility and empathy for the people you are helping. Both Kelly’s experiences, as well as my own, have showed me that the greatest obstacle in assisting others the comprehension of what they have gone through and the feelings that come along with the understanding of trauma and struggles that they face throughout their lives.
After listening to Kelly speak, I was very inspired by her stories and the course of action she took to make a difference in other lives. She shared pictures of her travels and the people she met, and her stories about trying to help these many people were heartwarming. However, from listening to her speak, I gathered that possibly the most difficult part of helping these people, was to hear and learn about their lifestyles and the way they were forced to live. During her presentation, there were multiple times that Kelly became very emotional, recapturing the stories about the people she has met. She described the nineteen year old girl who witnessed the decapitation of her family members and who was forced to abandon her mother at a refugee camp. She stated that in this moment, it was so hard for her to realize and accept that the only difference between her own life, and the life of this girl, was the chance of birth. Kelly told us how hard it was for her to listen to stories such as this, and how she herself felt guilty that she lives in such fortune and luxury that others do not have that same fortune. She was pained by their stories, and felt angry that people had to live in such conditions, when she herself takes advantage of such small necessities every day. After listening to Kelly speak, I arrived at the conclusion that one of the most difficult aspects in assisting others is listening to their heartbreaking stories, comparing them to your own life, and realizing the lack of concern for people in such dire need.
Although I have experienced these scenarios on a different level, I can relate to this feeling of pity and anger that Kelly felt through my own service projects. In high school, my main service focus was leading an anti-bulling group at my school. I often mentored students of different grade levels in their fear and struggles that they face every day because of the words and actions of other students. The stories were often heart wrenching, and at times very scary, as I talked to both a student who was physically hurting herself, as well as a boy who contemplated suicide. This type of service was extremely rewarding, and from the feedback that our group received, I knew that we were making a serious difference in these students’ lives. However, like Kelly, this service was very difficult for me at times because I would listen to these students describe their fear of going to school or even their thoughts of hurting themselves. Words cannot describe how I felt in trying to deal with the boy who wanted to commit suicide, and it was a pain that I will remember for the rest of my life. Like Kelly’s anger that she felt towards the people who forced the nineteen year old girl leave her mother, I felt anger towards the children who, in a literal sense, almost bullied this little boy to his death. From my own experiences, I was able to recognize Kelly’s feelings for the people that she tried to help, and I can relate that listening and understanding these personal stories is very possibly the greatest obstacle in assisting others.
Although Kelly’s service was on a much greater and international scale than my own service, I can relate in small ways to the way she felt when she helped others. In this way, I believe the greatest obstacle in assisting others is an internal obstacle; it is an obstacle that can inflict fear, guilt, and extreme empathy for the person you are assisting. However, despite your struggles when dealing with this person in need, I am certain that Kelly and I can both agree that any internal obstacle service may cause is without a doubt worth the pain because of both the rewarding experience that you receive, as well as the assistance you pass on to others.
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