The thing that scared me the most before coming on the race was the fact that I would have to live with five other people for months at a time. Of course I have been living with people my entire life. As the middle child of five I cannot remember a time when there were not people all around me… But this is different. These five others go everywhere with me, sleep right next to me, share everything from food to the struggles of the day with me whether I like it or not. There is no escape from them. People are annoying. People smell funny. People are gross. I don’t want to live so closely with people… especially if I have no choice in who those people are.
From the moment I met my squad at training camp I separated everyone into categories. There were the people I really wanted to have on my team so that we could hang out every day and become be-in-each-others-weddings best friends. There were those who I wouldn’t be upset with if they were on my team; surely they would have something cool to offer. There were those who I thought I could tolerate for the few months until team changes. After-all, teams only last a few months before everyone is thrown into the randomizer and placed with different people for the next few months. There were also those whom I didn’t even see because they didn’t talk to me and I didn’t go out of my way to talk to them. The last group is composed of the people who I didn’t think I could live with at all. Every person in every squad has this list. If you think I am wrong ask anyone who has gone on the World Race. We all have a dream team composed somewhere in our minds.
The truth is there are a ton of weird, incredibly odd, different people in the world… This fact coupled with a journey to eleven countries in eleven months to eat strange food, sleep in vastly different environments and basically give up the comforts of home attracts only the crazy adventurous people.
I am sure you are wondering why I am telling you this now as the end of the World Race looms before me. In two months I will be rid of all these silly other humans who stuck it out and put up with my weirdness for the last eleven months… and I am going to miss them… a lot.
Future Racers I want to let you in on a secret that I only recently came to understand. Everyone on your squad has done something you haven’t…
Everyone has gone somewhere you have never been…
Everyone is able to teach you something you need to learn…
Sure, there are people who you don’t gravitate towards.
People whose brains flow in the complete opposite direction that yours does…
People who don’t understand the loveliness of silence and space…
Those people hold knowledge that can be the difference between war and peace.
Here I am in the last stages of my race looking back at the beginning to see a foolish human who put whole human beings into little boxes.
When I found out who was on my first team I burst into tears in front of my entire squad and the leadership staff. I looked around me seeing five faces I had not really seen before and yet were going to be the five faces I saw every waking hour of the first four months of my race. I didn’t know them at all and I was afraid. They were not who I had expected to be on my team. They were not the people I had invested time in at all.
Here now… Looking back I love them and I learned a lot.
A lot of what happens to you is your attitude about it. If I walked into my first team with a grateful heart eager to learn who these people were and how I could learn from them, my first four months would have been so much easier.
If I had trusted God to care for and challenge me through the people he placed in my life I would have been a lot happier.
The World Race, a year I took to travel around the globe, helping others with the abilities that God has given me… That was my vision for my year.
As it is I did help… but more than that I learned that it is not good to run from the people who make you uncomfortable. Instead you should turn, embrace them, and seek to learn.
All for now through the eyes of a storyteller…
