NEW ZEALAND TRIP POST: Trying Out Shoes

8/24

Well they don’t call it hard work for nothing!  It’s been two days and while I think I’ve actually had it pretty easy in regards to manual labor, my body is beginning to disagree.  I guess you could say that all the aches and pains I’m feeling are just a really good lesson in appreciation.

I say this because while it may have only been a short time so far, I have definitely found myself feeling very appreciative lately.  Back when I interviewed for this opportunity, I was told that the work would be hard so I expected it but I never had any idea how taxing even the simplest tasks on the work site would be.  Basically, when we got our first work assignments, I thought I had lucked out when they said I would be painting.  Sure I wanted to use tools and learn new skills but I thought that painting would be a good way to ease into my experiment in construction work.  Well in hindsight, I couldn’t have been more wrong.  I’ve been on the painting crew for two days now and even though I have painted before, as I rolled the ceiling, craning my neck to see what I’m doing, I found myself thinking how I would not be able to do this for a living and how much more respect I have for people that do.

The moral of this story is that we need every single person and their skill set to make this world work.  In every community, we each play our parts.  For example, maybe you are an architect and you can design the most breathtaking buildings but without the people choosing to work on construction crews, you’re really not doing anything more than doodling.  And in turn if you are on the team constructing a building, you would be lost without the blueprint instructions that are provided by the architect.  This is only one example but most of the time it takes a team to help make the final product come to fruition. 

We all have our ways of contributing to this world, no matter how big or small but ultimately it is how we all work together that allows us to accomplish things.  Sometimes it's easy to forget that.  Often, we tend to think that we are the most important part of the equation or the star of the show but without a good supporting cast, we wouldn’t be nearly as successful.  Maybe there really is something to the old saying that encourages people to walk a mile in someone else’s shoes to understand exactly what they go through.  I might have put on my own work boots this morning but I definitely took a stroll through someone else's daily routine and I have to say, I will never look at a fresh coat of paint the same.