Power of Caring and Being Emotionally Invested

Until recently, I did not look at myself as an emotional person. Before this incident, I thought of myself as not emotional at all, though a caring person. Caring for me means that when I look after a person or people. Like if they have some work, I do it. Or, if they need something, I will try and help them with that. Emotional for me is that when someone tells me something about themselves or their story, it will affect me mentally, or I would think about it a lot. But now, after this incident, it does affect me.

However, quite surprisingly, an incident this month pushed me into a position of responsibility, which led me to realize that one of my key strengths is being emotionally invested in the work I do and the people around me.

I am part of Pune’s Rotaract’s club, and when the President of our club suddenly resigned, it put the organizational activities into chaos, as there was no one to direct us. Due to this vacuum of leadership, everyone was confused and was working without any coordination.

I happened to be the senior-most active member of the club and was also confused about how to go about this situation. So what I did was first aligned with a couple of others from the core committee, and we helped everyone calm down and encouraged them to take a break. Then we got everyone together the following day with a fresh mind to align on the next steps.

This next week was the most challenging, most mentally harassing, and full of work. So the next week, a lot of work had to be done for our upcoming club installation. Everything was left to be done. But this needed to be addressed as a priority. And a lot of uncomfortable conversations were about to take place as whoever would be the next President. It would be new and would require a lot of help. So I would have to coordinate with everyone and everything. And even I didn’t know everything that would have to be done. Although people had calmed down, it was still chaotic, and no one knew what they had to do, but we had to move forward.

So we all members aligned and decided until the district council suggested otherwise, and suddenly, that derailed our path. We were supposed to meet with the President. And talk about the happenings. So I felt terrible that he should have spoken to a few of us before sending in the resignation. And the same day before receiving the mail, we had met him, and he didn’t tell us anything about the thought of resigning. And the idea of trying and solving the issue and listening to both sides of the argument.

Before this, he had come to me a couple of times. We were saying that he wanted to resign. And last time he came to me with the problem. I was tired of the same things, And I told him not to bully us. After this, I didn’t know how the conversation would be. We wanted it to go peacefully. But at the same time, we were angry about it. But knowing it would have to go wrong at some time was harassing me. So after thinking about it a bit. I concluded that no matter what, I have to do it and get it over with. I would try and sort it as peacefully as possible. 

It was so challenging for me to deal with this conversation that I was very clouded in my mind; however, after a couple of hours of spending downtime with my friends. My mind calmed down. I felt quiet and peaceful. And I realized that once I was calmed, I could look at the problem fresh. And it didn’t seem to be such a big Mountain to climb. But it seemed like I could plan the steps and proceed. 

Then we organized another BOD meeting to discuss our President’s resignation.While hosting this healthy yet uncomfortable discussion, I was able to keep my calm but was on the verge of crying. However, I was able to stay strong and didn’t let anyone know about it. I cared about people on both sides of the argument and wanted to handle it gently and ensure all points were put forward and sorted out. Just keeping my calm made me look and feel stronger.

After that, we decided to let our President be and asked him to take back his resignation. Though it was a hard decision for us, we felt it had to be taken.

Small communication gaps can lead to big misunderstandings. After this experience, I realized that I was emotionally affected by this incident. I was surprised to see myself being emotionally affected by an experience like this as I had never cried for anything such as this experience. I felt good as I didn’t know that I was an emotional person until the incident.

So the power of caring and being emotional came out. And I gave my 100% to sort it out. If I didn’t care, my attitude would have been that even if it broke the friendships, it wouldn’t matter to me at all.

After this, my whole month went perfectly. After this monumental event, I made some fantastic friends and grew very close to them, which was necessary, relaxing, and calming.