Sunday, October 20, 2013

10/20/13-One Step Back and Two Steps Forward!


One step back and two steps forward!
By: Norris Andriuskevicius 

            With all of the things we as a group have had to endure such as the government shutdown, car wreck, group dynamics discussions, and more, today will go down as the toughest day of ECOEE 2013. Expecting to wake up to go hiking, we were instead having a serious and difficult about sacrificing some of our freedom to oversee a group member who breached the contract. As Petzoldt believed, people are of the greatest importance, and before you could take care of others you must take care of yourself. As the great philosopher Lao Tzo shares “Knowing others is wisdom, knowing yourself is enlightenment! Before we were able to finish our discussion, the group member had decided to take the burden off of us, and had the courage to make the decision on his own to no longer carry on in our expedition. It was a moment of mixed emotions, heart-felt goodbyes, and final words and thoughts shared. Over the course of ECOEE dating back to the beginning of the Spring semester I have seen this group member make great strides in progressing to become a better individual who had helped this group, and himself. From the many conversations shared with him he was certainly a loving and caring individual for every person in this group, had cared for how the group was developing, and how ECOEE was changing him as an individual. I think the same could be said for how every group member had felt about him after we have all become friends and have grown to love each other. He had filled our hearts with laughter, gave us insight on his perspective, and overall built relationships with each and every one of us in his and our chapters of our books of a lifetime. I respect him for his decision, and know he will be greatly missed and certainly remembered. But most of all, I believe I can say for the group, we hope and have faith that you will take all of the positive steps you have made, learn from this lesson, and continue to make progress and take steps towards bettering yourself as an individual to make a difference in other peoples lives. I’m going to leave this with a final quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson, “ What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us.”!

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