July 22, 2009

Though for the day: “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face in marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
- Theodore Roosevelt

After the barbeque and sing-a-long festivities of yesterday evening, I got to thinking about a conversation my son and I had with his doctor just before we left for Poland. I mentioned that we were doing a volunteer vacation that was to take us to a small town east of Warsaw. She said that she had heard of volunteer vacations, but that a friend of hers who had done such a trip came back disappointed that the work filled every day and prevented her from “seeing the country.” I tried to explain that the whole point of the trip was to get to know the real people of the country and not to check off a list of sights. And besides, I said, you could always sightsee before or after the two-week stint if you really wanted to. She did not seem convinced.
I suppose that people who are motivated to volunteer to spend two weeks working in a country rather than sight-seeing intuitively understand that spending an evening singing Polish songs has its rewards.

By Cyndi