A Commitment To Inward
Image via Healthline
A common draw to immersive experiences is to get outside of ourselves. To encounter a different culture, build new relationships, seek the discomfort in which we often find growth. In community engagement programs, we witness the recurring pattern of finding disruption in the world we thought we fully understood. We unearth new meaning. Essentially, we relearn what we once thought was true.
The catch
After we experience disruption, it’s dangerous to think our newfound understanding is static. If we’ve managed to learn something that has dismantled our previous version of the “truth,” there will likely be something more to learn that challenges our thinking again. For example, at some point, we realize assigned sex has no correlation to a child’s favorite color. However, if we’re not willing to continually be critical of our understanding of gender and gender identity—to push beyond that initial new understanding—we’re missing the mark. In a changing world, the reality is that we never, and will never, be all-knowing.
The Real Work
As much as we ache to look outward and soak up everything around us, the real work is inward. A constant deconstruction of ourselves and what we think we know is essential. The desire for a disruptive experience, like community engagement experiences, must be paired with a lifelong commitment to self-evaluation and critique (aka cultural humility). What we find while looking outward creates no lasting change if not internalized.
So, how are you preparing yourself and the participants of each community engagement experience to look inward rather than out? In what ways are you educating yourself to challenge your own perceptions of the world, rather than waiting for an interaction or story to disrupt them?
