Yesterday I headed up to Fargo with 14 other students from UMM. People were needed in Fargo because the river was rapidly rising and is still projected to crest way above flood level. Volunteers congregated in the huge Fargodome and when we got there, after the chat-filled hour and a half drive, I was amazed at what was going on inside. The indoor athletic arena was filled with thousands of people scurrying around somewhere around 30 gigantic sand piles, some shoveling into bags others were holding, some tying bags, some loading bags into pay-loaders or onto pallets, some providing food and some taking a break. It was total chaos. And that was why it was working.
On the way back, the guy who had sort of arranged everything interrupted all the exhausted happy talk and said he liked to reflect on experiences from which he feels like he can learn something. He stressed the importance of self and communal reflection and so we all went around and spoke for a little bit, some about funny things that had happened in the sand pit, some about what could be taken from this experience and something M said made me really think. He said that when he got in, he noticed the total chaos that was happening inside and how that was a perfect example of why hierarchical systems don’t truly work. People were running around doing whatever they felt like and there was no one to order them back into line or ask them to get to work. Everyone inside that dome was there because he or she wanted to be there and it showed in the work being done and the way in which that work was being done. M didn’t so much touch on this but another guy, J, mentioned the urgency with which people were working and it was something that I witnessed in others and myself as well. Thousands of people had gathered to help friends and strangers alike and under this communal system, you could work when you wanted and stop just the same except everyone was working like crazy and being totally positive about it. Getting back to M’s point, he said that the efficiency and quality of the work was because it wasn’t arranged hierarchically and I totally agree with him. I can’t remember the last time I felt connected to the work I was doing, save a few papers I’ve written in school, but in that dome, I was one of the many people who shoveled, bagged, tied, lifted, pushed, pulled and time ran at the same pace it does when I’m into a good book. People came together for something bigger than themselves and to me, that made all the difference.
I was thinking about how good it felt to have given my time to a cause like that and to be totally honest, I gained as much from that experience, if not more, than the people that I was helping. What we each recieved was totally different but there is just something about giving of yourself and your time that is totally rewarding. True, this all sounds very cheesy and cliche but that doesn’t make it any less true. A community came together out of a need and by reveiling that need, we reveal dependence and through that dependence, we begin to build trust. Working next to people I had never met before and will probably never see again was something I will remember for a long time. For a few hours I was part of a community, something bigger than myself, and because of it, we pushed the waters back, just a little bit.
