Awakening

    - Mandy Wong （LA11, Year 3, Counseling and Psychology, Hong Kong Shui Yan University）

From those seven days, the abundant, beautiful and touching experience and learning have inspired me to reflect on my life and my soul, and re-think of leadership attributes. In the second night of the camp, the speaker shared her family, identity and vocation. Especially the relationship with her father touched me a lot and made me cried for the first time in the camp. I recalled that the quarrel was always unavoidable in my family. Nevertheless, actually I didn’t like this at all. We love each other in the family, don’t we? I remembered at the end the speaker sang a song to her father. She couldn’t directly say "I love you" to him but she expressed her love in the song. When she was singing those three words, I awaken to which I also love my family. I learned to embrace myself and others in my life. Organizing one’s life is a prerequisite for becoming a leader.

I am trying hard to repair and re-build the relationship with my family.

Ever heard of people buying a lunch with five dollars? Heard of workers hand-making more than hundred paper bags within ten minutes? These scenarios reflect our society nowadays. The experiential activities in the camp made me seeing this world through my heart. In one activity, we constantly made paper bags and beg for shopkeepers’ purchase in order to make a pitiful living. At that time I only thought of making paper bags non-stop because we had to live and survive. I deeply found out that the poor have been quietly tolerating those endless price squeeze and unfair treatment. On the other hand, we had received help and encouragement from ardent people in the face of difficulty and poverty, giving me the feeling of love and respect. Such experience awakened me to the true love for this world: compassion. A leader needs to have compassion in his or her heart.

I am learning to be compassionate to others.

Those seven days awakened me. In the past, a girl was "asleep". The calling from outside and the crying from inside had suddenly awakened her.