YES GIVE is one of SUA’s newer clubs, and their mission is founded on the belief that the transformation of one individual can have a lasting impact on a community, a society, and even on the whole of humanity. Our mission is to support our members to become the most courageous, compassionate, and wise global citizens they can be. I’ve been a member since the beginning of the 2017-2018 school year.
Now the club’s focus is shifting more toward community engagement, but all last semester, the club was focused on workshops around topics like empathy, personal growth, and self-care. I learned to go into YES GIVE meetings with an open mind and an open heart, because I knew the people in there were going to be kind and supportive, and that the YES GIVE meetings are a place to connect on a deeper level with my peers. For example, YES GIVE meetings usually involve some sort of conversation that requires the participants to look inside themselves—to be really introspective—and often did this by asking questions that really cut through life’s BS. One of the conversations I remember most vividly was prompted by the question, What do you pretend? That question really rattled me, but it was a necessary kind of rattling; sometimes you have to get shook up in order to realize you needed to shake things up, to change, to grow. The meetings allowed each of us to present a brutally honest, raw, and vulnerable version of ourselves in a way our daily interactions just don’t allow most of the time, and I wasn’t used to that. I’m still not used to that. And that’s a shame.
On a campus this small, we should be able to have those real-talk moments on a day-to-day basis more often. But we don’t. We’re afraid to let more than a few select people into our lives, and sometimes we don’t even present our most honest selves to those people. We stick to small-talk about classes and the weather, because that’s easier. It requires less emotional energy from us. But what I found in the YES GIVE meetings is the more emotional energy I put out, the more closely connected I felt with my peers and the more I felt I understood myself. Being vulnerable and honest in YES GIVE meetings were the start to being more honest with myself all the time. And if we want to talk about self-care, we need to understand what parts of our lives and souls need the most care. You can’t tackle a problem you can’t identify.
So, in this week of Her Campus Soka self-care inspiration, I encourage you to stop yourself when you find yourself responding a flat, “Good” to your friends’ inquiries of “How-are-you?” Tell the truth. Are you good? Or are you just avoiding a complicated answer? Inserting real honestly into our daily conversations is a way to simulate the environment of a YES GIVE meeting—all it takes is a genuine interest in yourself and the people around you.