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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