For varying reasons I didn't get to a single talk at greenbelt this year. this felt like a bit of a failure until a wise friend shared that he hadn't been to a talk at gb in many a year either. I think my ultimate benefit from greenbelt is that - when others share a similarity so I don't feel quite as bad about myself as I did at the start of the conversation. A wonderful woman I barely know made a deliberate effort to share with me how hard parenting can be at particular ages and acknowledged that trying to do that at gb as a single parent must be particularly challenging. I don't know that she has any idea how important that acknowledgment was to me at that moment.
Having been so many times now, I think the programme provides an important backdrop, but the thing I value most is the contributions of the greenbelters rather than the contributors per se. The myriad acts of kindness that remind me that the world is full of good people doing good things. The pooling of food for picnics; random sharings of encouragement in queues; activists passionate about their charities; the lending of pillows, and a blanket put out for me as someone took a moment to be thoughtful and act on it; buying of icecreams for the children; the volunteers making it all happen with smiles on their faces; strangers literally taking the burden off your back and carrying it for a while. Being around such generosity is contagious and I did most of these things as well as was on the receiving end of these gifts.
Life is like this outside of greenbelt too - I want to keep noticing that and ensure it happens more abundantly throughout my whole year.
And here are some quotes from my children:
A: When asked by me - there must be a limit to how many hours of tig can be played in a day - "yes, 24"
J: "That's the whole point of camping mum, that you don't have to change your socks..."
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