Group Dynamics

by: Ida Marionne Arriola

What do you expect when you put nine totally different personalities with various levels of threshold for stress and different coping mechanisms, in one house, 24/7, for a whole month? Add these mentioned elements to a considerable amount of stress-inducing factors such as: experiencing hours of heat wave while having dozens of tasks to complete related to our community organizing activities, household chores and a shortage of water to complete half of those chores. Not to mention the most challenging obstacle we have to face: having to walk in the middle of the day, for 4 kilometers of rough road, just to get to the highway. And if you ever felt tired of walking the same distance to get to our haven, you can choose to pick another option which will you give you that needed surge of adrenaline rush through a 5 minute motorcycle ride to get to your destination, which for us meant three possible places: heaven, hell or if you get even luckier, our house.

It is not fair to just get a taste of the hardships that we go through in a month, people should also get to nibble on the best of times that we have during our month long sleepovers, as I would put it. Thinking of it as a month long duty does not help us cope with it as it would mean that we are obligated to be there against our will, instead, I would like to think of community exposure as a vacation with friends and we just happened to be at the right place at the right time to be of service to a community in need of our help.

Our favorite moments as group in Mirangan are those which were spent with each other as friends and as a family. The long walks to our destination were filled with fruit jokes, fish jokes, surname jokes and a whole lot of stories about the persons we were before we met each other. Some of us already knew each other before med school but when you’re living with a group of people for this long, you eventually get to know that your idea about some of the qualities you think you knew about them would eventually change and you get a feeling of being connected to each other deeper than you thought you would when you first met them.

 

The Baldemorts.

Living with the group was a bit of a rollercoaster at first but I can definitely say I would not trade off any members of my group for my other classmates in a different community. I always thought that the group made the place and maybe at times, the place makes the group. Sure our classmates assigned at other places had living conditions which were way better than ours but what we lacked for in the comforts of our living arrangements, we made up for the relationships we have built and made stronger as the days went by. It did not matter that we did not have tiled floors, television sets and internet connection while at the community, what mattered was the feeling of satisfaction of not having to hold grudges against your group mates. The feeling of acceptance regardless of who you were, how you reacted to certain situations and what you did or did not do for the group eventually made living with each other become as natural as breathing in the air that surrounded our home in Mirangan. Nothing beats the experience of having to sleep peacefully at night knowing you helped your friend be a better person and becoming a better person as well, because a friend helped you realize what you needed to be in order to be a better version of yourself.

I have learned that in our world today, a relationship of any kind is not made by just knowing and embracing the things you have in common and it is not founded on whether you have the same idiosyncrasies or not but it is made solid through the billions of differences you have. It is the annoying things that make you want to behave like cavemen clobbering each other to death that make you want to get to know a person’s character better and get to understand who he/she really is. It is easy to lose yourself and be carried away if all you think about is yourself while living amongst a colorful set of people, sure there are misunderstandings and hurtful moments but these are the things necessary to help you grow as a person.

I have come to realize that if you take away the material things that you think mattered, you eventually will be left with nothing but the insurmountable little things that take your breath away. Life gave me a whole lot of surprises during those days, it sure came in different forms and I tell you the whole experience was worthwhile. When you least expect it, gifts may come to you in a form of a helping hand when faced with endless tasks, a pat on the shoulder when you have done your best for the group, a group hug for when you have finished a core group meeting, community assembly and other tasks that you prepared for through all the sleepless nights, a song for rejoicing because it rained and you had water to finish the laundry. My friend, if you’re reading this, know that it may not come to you just like that, but when it hits you, you learn that in life, what is most essential is almost always invisible to the naked eye.