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Alan, a youth worker.
I’m working on a project now that is helping young people to get out of the trap of illiteracy. They are all bright enough to read and write but they don’t really want to and they get better at hiding it. It’s good work but it’s exhausting. I know that some of them are so damaged it is a miracle that they even appear normal. I want to support them and I am motivated. I see it as a work of healing as much as one of education. People say I get too intense about it. But I think that is what it needs: they need to really know someone cares about them, and can be hurt by them, before they will start to learn to please me. What really hurts me is the financial strain. I have to find the funding for the project. Funding depends on targets. If I can’t hit my employment targets for this year I will not get funding for next year. With the present group I’m sure I will not make the funding agency’s target. Then the project will fold and I will be out of a job too. It’s no wonder my friends tell me I worry too much.
That’s why the fourfold pattern of Don Bosco hit me so hard: It reminded me that I have to celebrate life and enjoy what I am doing. I know I am doing a good job, there is no other project in this area getting the results I’m getting. But what is it doing to me? I don’t laugh as much as I used to. The young people on the project have stopped trying to have a laugh with me. Looking at the four Salesian words has reminded me that I need to lighten up and not take my responsibilities as a ton-weight to carry around, and take to bed, and keep me awake. I know Don Bosco said that holiness for him meant being cheerful. I take that as a challenge to relax and enjoy what I’m doing, even when it is hard and uncertain work. The other three words seem OK to me at present but that celebration element has definitely got my name on it if I am to follow a more balanced path as a Salesian youth worker. |
