Crisis of Conscience

To stay or to stop CO: that is the question. The past few days I have been tortured by this choice. I have explored all foreseeable consequences, all my motivations, all my reservations and opinions, broken through all my excuses and rationalizations to arrive at the shameful origin of my dilemma and yet I haven’t gotten any closer to arriving at a decision. Thinking about this is agonizing enough that I have started drinking again just to calm myself down.

My excuse at first was that I wouldn’t want to fight with my parents over having to stay in the area being that they don’t like the idea. Now that they told me they’d support me with anything, I found myself suddenly asking if, indeed in the first place, I want to. The problem with me is not just staying in the area, which was simple enough, but actually having to live there for an extended period of time. Suddenly demand of having to leave my comforts, my middle-class life which was starting to and supposed to be trending up, became unreasonable.

The shallow shameful selfish reason

I mean, I love the work, I love helping the people fight for what we believe is just, I love being part of a cause that is bigger than me, but why do I have to sacrifice my comfortable life for it? Why can’t I stay where I am, doing what I do now? Why do I have to go the extra mile and leave my comforts to experience what the people in our communities are experiencing? Isn’t it enough that we understand their plight by seeing it and working with them all day?

Of course there is the answer that it is part of the training, that it is a necessary part of Integration and Social Investigation, to see for ourselves. I’ll give them that, but that for me is the extra mile. For me our integration with the community is enough for us to work effectively within the community.

Having to live in the area to me is leaving all the comforts I’ve come to be accustomed to. I said I have no problem dealing with it, and I have experienced it before so I knew I could, but having to actually ‘live’ like that and not just experience it once in a while, scared me. This is me, the middle-class, who found that the idea of leaving behind my comfortable life terrifying and unnecessary.

Am I ashamed of having come to this realization? Of course I am. But I believe I’ve come to the origin of my current reservations about continuing with the training. It is as selfish a reason as it could get. I ask, why should I go there, when I can still help somehow, but without sacrificing my life, my luxuries? I found myself suddenly hesitant to go that far.

The other reasons

This demand of the program I guess was the tipping point that prompted me to reconsider about continuing. Our group has raised other opinions, concerns and issues regarding the direction we’re taking.

CO is not for us. I think my batchmates and I have reached this consensus pretty early on. We discovered the qualities of organizers, the type of work and demands are incompatible with who we are. For me, the qualities required to be a good CO are a clash with my personality. I find it difficult to push myself to talk randomly with other people. The confrontational aspect of issue-based methodology is another factor. Agitating people, having that fighting attitude, the necessity of inciting conflict confrontation is anathema to a person who prefers to be inconspicuous.

I say I wish that they made it clear that the life of a CO is irregular work hours, irregular work days, that the methodology requires us to pick a fight with authority. When we joined community organizing was pretty simple and straightforward. It’s only lately that I grasped the real meaning of it. That said I would have most probably joined anyway just to try it out.

The work by itself, despite the personality clash, like Abby said, we could do, but the life is a different story. Unfortunately, the CO work and life is the same. I think I’m not ready for this level of commitment and to forego my current life.

The thing here is, if we already have these doubts, somewhere down the line this could develop into unhappiness of our current situation. If we continue and in the end we discovered that we didn’t our decision our regret might turn to resentment, that we will be doing our work half-heartedly and we’ll be dragging ourselves to the area. We might get cranky about simple things. I might start getting drunk in the area just to feel better. Hell I already started drinking.

Reasons to stay

I told ma’am France that our 6-month no-commitment training already puts us in a bad position from the beginning. By then we have grown attached to the people, the area, the cause, our workplace, and to say goodbye to that by our personal decision is difficult. Francis was in the area only 2 weeks and people were already looking for him. Now that we are contemplating leaving half-way we already find ourselves in this difficult position. We cannot just walk away now from the people who we have grown close and have already come to expect something of us. They might grow cynical of people like us who say we want to help but then leave. That is my biggest consideration, it’s not just a personal decision, they are too many people that will get affected by it.

Besides what will they say if we suddenly leave? They’ll think badly of not just us. The reputation of Ateneo will be tarnished. They’ll say ateneans are too weak. Our mentors will look down upon DS students. Sir Leland will skin us alive. Our personal involvement has become too deep that we’ll be damaging relationships when we pull out.

Personally though I love the work, or at least the concept, if not the actual way we go about it. Our PO s are initiating what seems to be a large scale change soon that might benefit a lot of people that I would love to be part of. There is also the environmental aspect of our organization’s work. The erratic nature of my work; the irregular hours, the ever shifting schedules is fun in it’s dynamicity but I must admit it is starting to take its toll. Maybe at this point in my life I want structure and as sense of normalcy more.

The balance of judgment

Simply put our decision is this: go, in order to look out for ourselves because of the seemingly selfish thought that we could be happier doing something else, or stay since we have already made commitments not only to the program but to a lot of people we have come to know.

The crisis of conscience here is that if we go, we’ll be carrying with us the burden of the guilt that we cannot go beyond ourselves, sacrifice our own happiness and have to say goodbye, to all the people we have made connections to.

If we stay and we become unhappy, we’ll be wasting out trainors time and resources doing something half-heartedly, with us having to drag ourselves to do something that we don’t like.

The options

In the course of writing the above paragraphs I have surpassed the surge of emotion that left me writhing in agony about this decision. I thank God that I finally got the sign; I should stay, if only to honor the commitment I made to the program, to not abandon the people so suddenly without a better excuse than my selfish one.

At least this has calmed me down from my torturous dilemma, but when I approached ma’am France about this she threw another curve ball. If we will continue the program and complete the 6-months, TriCorps will be expecting us to stay longer, understandably because by then theoretically they would have invested resources for us to become “real” COs. However, coming from my painful decision making and coming up with the best compromise, taking to account the stuff Sir Leland that I learned from Mon, of us staying and managing our best to work through the last 3 months, we will be taking full advantage of the 6-month escape clause Sir Leland has worked in for us. My argument is that if we already have our doubts as of now, the best we could do is finish our commitment but barring any sudden change in our personal outlook that’s the best we could offer.

The thing here is the investment problem posed by Ms. Jane. Mon, after expressing her doubts, learned of Ms. Jane’s opinion that it is best for both of them if Mon will discontinue the program because it ill not be worth her time and resources to train someone who won’t be fully committed.

Now my plan is pose the same argument to the panel. If TriCorp will expect us to stay but we are adamant that we won’t, and as of now we have already our reservations, will it still be prudent to continue the program? I have just effectively threw the ball in their court. I will have expressed my willingness to work through the rest of my three months, but if I am to leave, which I kinda like to anyway, it will come from their decision, or at least a mutual one. Sneaky? Perhaps.

My first question is if they could find us something else to do, because we would love to continue the work we have already started but not as CO s. If that is really nonnegotiable then, like Mon ,I will continue to help as a volunteer on my own expense and on my own time, without the intent of the training, until I find a different job and I don’t have the time anymore. That’s the best option I could think of.

If I think about it Sir Leland will still push me to go through the program. The argument will be if I would want to help anyway why not just do it as the Trainee CO. My counter would be I would be bound by the requirements of the training and that is the part I don’t like. Other than it would just be an appeal to save face.

But I think now I have already made peace with my decision to stay. I have set my mind to do whatever it is asked of me on my training for the next 3 months. Personally, I love to stop right here, but then, I have made too many commitments, and by principle I have said that I would honor any promise I made.

Despicable me

Negative groundworking? Though it is not my express intent to sow seeds of dissent among my other CO-lleagues I may already infecting them with the idea of their dissatisfaction. As I explore and uncover that they have that spark of doubt and hesitation within them I am already giving it air so that it could start to burn. I articulate their unspoken reservations and give it power to take hold. At the same time, and I will admit this mostly conscious, I will be giving the panel the idea that it is indeed better to let us go already. I’ll be leveraging passions against each other so that the burden of decision will not fall on my shoulders with my loaded arguments. How to load them effectively, now that is another thing….