Well, We Tried

Last week when we were at the Cerebral Palsy Daycare the lady in charge asked us if there was an art that we could teach them the next time we came. She told us that they have done finger painting before and they were wanting to learn something else. After her mentioning finger painting, the first type of art that came to my mind was Paper Mache.

Why? I don’t know. I guess I associate both finger painting and Paper Mache with my childhood. I’ve got some fond memories with both of those.

So that’s what I said.

So today we showed up with our bag of flour and they brought balloons and newspaper. They tore the newspaper into strips while I mixed the flour with water to make a pancake-batter-ish consistency. Then we presented it all to the kids and showed them how to do it.

3 minutes later….

Two of the kids thought that the Paper Mache mix was food and had it all over their faces. One of them was busy smearing it all over the table. Another one was trying to eat the newspaper. We had Paper flour-water mixture on our clothes and the floor. Two of the balloons had popped and scared one of the girls. She was crying and couldn’t be consoled.

And we were just standing there staring at it all.

What was my thought in the very moment looking at the disaster that my hopeful fun idea had caused?

“Well, we tried.”

And then we laughed it off and cleaned it all up. One of the kids was still busy stuffing a fistful of the liquidy substance into their mouth.

Two of us still made some of the Paper Mache on the balloons. We made one for each kid and set them out to dry. Maybe in a few days we’ll try their hands at finger painting on the Paper Mache balls. I’m sure there could be nothing dangerous about that….

Well, we tried.

It’s not the first time we’ve felt failure here in Nepal. The more you try, the more you fail. The more you succeed too though. Sometimes you’ve just got to try with no idea what is going to happen.

The kids had fun though, and we had a good laugh.

You can’t let your fear of failure stop you. You can’t let your lack of knowledge stop you. You can’t let anything stop you. If you want to help bad enough, you’ll start figuring out how.

We all want to help this world in some way. We want to make it a better place for everyone. Most the time though, we have no idea how to do it. So we just start and we figure it out along the way.

It’s been the most amazing experience feeling these failures as well as these successes. Every day is different.

This week I taught a great self-defense class. Then the next day I destroyed a Cerebral Palsy Daycare with Paper Mache.

Well, we tried. And I am happy that we did.

Tara