Holding Space for Failure

She was young, feisty, confident and all of 14. Rare traits in young people that come from adversity. She shone through the first two days of the camp like she belonged here. The nurturing environment fueled her creative confidence and helped her achieve new milestones. Her learning edge was challenged and she always loved a good challenge. 

Day 3 is usually a Youth Led Day at camp where young people are encouraged to lead workshops for their peers. She signed up to lead an art workshop. Known for her discipline, she prepared well. She had thought through her workshop, played it over many times in her head. She felt confident and was positive that she will sail through. 

The workshop tanked. She lost her confidence when she fumbled through her instructions. She struggled with some steps and it became all chaotic and messy. She lost her composure and just about managed to complete the allotted time. However, she saw something strange. No one left her workshop or abandoned her. No one sneered at her. Her peers, whom she didn't know well, held space for her and for her failure. 

Post the workshop, she cried and poured her heart out. She had never felt so much support before, definitely not when she had failed. She had grown up in an environment where success was expected of her. Being a girl, she had to fight harder to earn success and each success brought with it pressure to perform better. She didn't realize, she was holding herself back from being her best because she had become too scared to fail. There was no support for failures in her environment. 

Yet here, she had failed and no one had abandoned her. She realized she had permission to fail and in her failure she had achieved the biggest success of her life. She had learnt to not let failure destroy her. Her peers ensured that failure gave her strength. They held space for her to fail. Her tears were tears of joy and realization. She had a transformative life experience. 

According to Heather Plett, "Holding Space means that we are willing to walk alongside another person in whatever journey they’re on without judging them, making them feel inadequate, trying to fix them, or trying to impact the outcome. When we hold space for other people, we open our hearts, offer unconditional support, and let go of judgement and control."

This young woman experienced the power of Holding Space when she was going through her journey and it helped her discover things that she had no permission to feel before. This young woman is the embodiment of the power that each of us holds within us as human beings - the power to be empathetic towards ourselves and others.

The outdoor experiential camps at Dream a Dream use the Life Skills Approach to help young people transform and discover their true potential. One of the core tenets of these camps is to Hold Space for young people as they go through her personal journeys and discoveries. Since 2002, thousands of young people have discovered their confidence, resilience, empathy, creativity through these outdoor experiential camps.

My biggest Life Lesson came during lunch-break at School

I spent 13 years in School. These included countless hours inside the classroom learning physics, chemistry, history and mathematics. I loved most of the subjects. 

I memorized dates in History but was fascinated by stories of warriors and kings when they came alive.

Shakespeare's Julius Caesar was easy to remember from the comic book than the text book as I saw the illustrations and imagined a world from a bygone era.

I practiced algorithms and theorems and a few odd compounds in Chemistry but loved most when we mixed compounds in the lab and watched magic happen.

I spent days pouring over geography trying to understand the formation of clouds and volcanoes. I dreamt of being David Livingstone and discovering a new world on Earth like he discovered the Congo basin.

I loved Computers primarily because I had a huge crush on my teacher and I so wanted to impress her.

I loved Algebra because I was challenged by a girl and it was good fun to sometimes beat her. Though, I have never understood why we learnt Algebra.

I hated Physics primarily because the teacher could not care to explain.

I didn't much care for Hindi because the teacher spent most the class session telling us stories from his life rather than teaching. So on and so forth.

Yet, all I was expected to do was memorize and regurgitate it back during examinations. The hundreds of hours inside the classroom didn't give me a single life lesson that is worth remembering. My biggest life lesson came during our lunch break at School in my 6th grade.

Every lunch break, after gobbling up our lunch, we used to form two teams and race around our colonial styled school building in a relay format. 5-6 people in a team exchanging batons after completing a full school circle. Darting between scores of students, who were playing, running, jumping around, it was our own little Olympics. This particular year, our team was in shambles. We were consistently losing every single day of the school year and our hopes were grim. We tried making team changes but nothing seemed to click. One fine afternoon, we finished lunch and gathered around for a daily race. Something was different that day. I felt a sense of calm and in a moment of consciousness, I said to myself, “we will win today!”

The race began and with each exchange of baton the other team was expanding their lead. The fastest runners from each team were reserved for the last. The last person in my friend’s team got the baton and he raced away feeling confident of winning yet another race. I received the baton just as my opponent was making his first turn. I closed my eyes for a split second and repeated, “We will win today!”

When I opened my eyes, everyone around me turned into a blur – children jumping around, playing, walking – everyone just disappeared. I saw only my opponent as he was making the turn. I ran. I ran with a sense of calm confidence. I felt my feet flying just inches above the ground. At the third turn, I overtook my opponent. I saw from the corner my eye; he had frozen in his tracks. I knew we had won not just the race but every race thereafter. We won and I knew it.

Whenever I think back at my school days, this memory is the most vivid. For years, I didn’t understand why I remembered this incident so vividly. It always comes alive like it happened yesterday. Now, I know. My body, my mind and my soul remembers this incident because it is my biggest life lesson.

It gave me my self-belief. The belief that I can make Impossible POSSIBLE!

Every time I am down in the dumps, pushed to a corner, when things seem impossible, this single experience gives me the strength and resilience to fight back, to pull myself up, to rise above and to come alive again. An experience from an inane activity that happened during lunch break at school.

I believe we all have these moments from our childhood. If we look around, our children’s lives are rich with powerful learning moments that fundamentally shape them, transform them, and give them a sense of their identity. Our children are curious and hungry to learn, discover, make sense of this world. The constant questions, the insatiable hunger to know, the Whys - these are all indicators of life's longing for itself. 

It's time schools are transformed to be nurturing environments for such powerful moments not just at lunch break but also within the classroom. 

It's time we recognize that children are dropping out of the school system because they are not feeling engaged, challenged and inspired. They are not getting their powerful learning moments that will nurture them and help them discover who they are.

It's time we accept that if we want to save this planet, we need to invest in creating experiences of empathy, love, caring and self-belief in our children.

If we can't change then maybe we just need to have longer lunch breaks so the universe can nurture its children, inspite of us. Just like Kahlil Gibran’s memorable words…

“Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. They come through you but not from you, And though they are with you yet they belong not to you. You may give them your love but not your thoughts, For they have their own thoughts. You may house their bodies but not their souls, For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams. You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you. For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.”

The many hues of Delhi: Uncleji at Sumitra Inn

It is not often that I travel to Delhi and as with any new place, it throws many new experiences my way. This trip, however, had more than its share of fascinating experiences that has prompted this post.

We stayed at the Sumitra Inn at Safdarjung Enclave, a Bed and Breakfast run by an elderly gentleman who everyone referred to as Uncleji. For some reason, he took a liking to Suchetha and myself and decided to share his experiences and wisdom with us. It was fascinating to hear stories about his marriage, about his wife whom he lost a few years back and about his approach to life. There were many nuggets of wisdom which young people like us sorely need as we take on journeys of togetherness and he was more than willing to share them.

During the early days of marriage, he used to give all his earnings to his wife. His lovely wife requested him that he clear all pending payments and then give her the remaining money. He didn't understand her reasoning for it but after much persistence relented and then one month, paid his bills, cleared his debts and then gave the remaining money to his wife. She then told him that this is the money she now has to run the house and will plan her month accordingly. She had this amazing ability to run the house with whatever money her gave her.

Once, he had to travel to Bangalore on work and wanted to buy a couple of new shirts. When he asked his wife for some money (Rs. 7 in good old days to buy 2 shirts), she flatly refused. He was angry and upset and when on his trip without the new shirts. A few weeks later she gave him the money and he was surprised. He said he didn't need the money or the shirts anymore. His wife explained that in her monthly budget there is no space for additional expenses so she could not give him the money. However, she realized that her husband needs shirts so over the last 2-3 weeks she has saved money little by little and now has the money to give him. He realized that day that his wife would always take good care of the family's needs and trusted all her decisions.

His eyes welled up when he spoke about his wife and we felt deeply moved by his love for his wife in whose memory he put up this Bed and Breakfast so he could continue to live a full life, feel grateful to have her in his life and meet new and interesting people.

Uncleji was deeply committed to service and playing an active role in the community. He helped setup the Arya Samaj centre in the neighbourhood where amongst other things they run a free dispensary for the poor and also get poor people married. During his youth, working at a public sector company, he shared many stories of selfless service. Once, when riding his scooter home, he passed by a construction site where a young lady was trying to take a break to feed her new born child. Her employer was shouting at her for wasting her time. He stopped his bike, went upto the contractor and told him that he will do the work while the mother can feed her child. He told the mother to take her time and filled in for her.

Another time, when he was driving his car, he saw a van ahead of him carrying pots. The pots fell on the road, broke and created a mess. He stopped his car and decided to remove all the broken parts from the road and put them on the side. While people honked and shouted at him, no one stopped to help him. He knew that once he cleared the road, it will ease the traffic and not cause any accidents. In the process, he cut his hand but didn't realize it.

We heard him complain about the growing anger and unrest amongst the people, the failure of the government and at the same time recognize the goodness in people. He belief in being good always and helping where he can and his experience of having understanding and tolerance in a relationship made him very endearing. Recognizing that he came from a patriarchal society, he admonished child marriage, dowry system and did not believe that girls are any inferior to men.

Uncleji gave us a gift of his wisdom and experience and we were grateful that Uncleji came into our lives, even if briefly. I have always believed that people come into our lives for a reason and we might not know that reason then but someday the dots will connect.

Meeting and spending those fleeting moments with Uncleji were definitely a highlight of our time in Delhi.