Proximity has never been an honest measurement of closeness or stability among relationships in my life. Those who I share the most miles between during the year are often those I am the closest with. The intention, patience, and understanding it takes to bridge that physical space, and still choose to stay connected, is what makes those bonds so rewarding.
My understanding of long distance and my first definition of it stemmed from my pen pals I had as a child. Writing letters back and forth to other kids my age without taking notice of where they were physically located was such a privilege. Throughout my entire life, the rotation of my “circle” has shifted and stirred whether it was splintered by moving homes, graduating high school, or quietly growing in different directions as individuals. Despite this, their impact on me has always lasted and parts of me will be forever made up by them.
A new kind of relationship I’ve had the privilege to experience is a unique one. Spending eight straight weeks with people, falling in love with them in an inimitable setting, and then parting ways across the world: the one-of-a-kind adventure that is an overnight summer camp is like no other, and nothing anyone can understand until they’ve lived it.
I wrote a post last summer regarding summer camp, but it was so different this summer. It was the same location, some of the same people, yet I find myself leaving a completely different person. I’m not sure where exactly the difference between the two summers lay but even the people around me at home have noted a difference in my “coming-home-from-camp attitude”. From Florida, to Georgia, to New York, to London, to Wales, to Ireland, to Scotland, to Australia, and every dot on the map in between, I fell genuinely in love with all of my co-counselors and was given fifty new reasons to travel and see the world.
My favorite poem is called “The Invitation” by Oriah Mountain Dreamer. I heard it for the first time when I was 15, almost five years ago when I was a freshman in high school. It’s the best way to put the feelings of being a summer camp counselor into words and describing the emotional, mental, and physical impact that these relationships have on you.
“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dream, for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon. I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow, if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain, mine or your own, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy, mine or your own; if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful, to be realistic, to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine, and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, ‘Yes.’
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.”
There is real beauty in twenty-somethings risking standard comfort just to ignite a child’s joy– risking good pay, giving up their entire summer, putting on the silliest outfits, and shamelessly playing the fool for single, genuine smile. When you put 50+ young adults together who just yearn to be kids again and who all have the same goal for the summer, they come together and create something incredible and unheard of.
I feel somewhat silly when I’m almost twenty and spend so much of my breath talking about summer camp, but I’ve met my future bridesmaids here, my best friends for life, partners I’ll speak highly of until I die, and kids that I hope to see succeed in every aspect of life and beyond. So, forgive me if I sound half my age for the stories I tell about color war, Olympics, Summerween, and every giggle, kiss, cry, and hug in between. There is nothing I’d rather do with my summers than be at my summer home with my second family.
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