Fátima Reyes, Alumni - Class of 2021
UWC Costa Rica
If I am being honest with myself and the reader, which I always strive to be, I must admit that I remember quite little of my first-year camp. It is one of the biggest traditions at UWC Costa Rica. Every year, right before October Break, all the firsties take a two-day trip to the damp Costa Rican mountains and spend some quality time with each other, bonding over activities that range from opening up about your own stereotypes to crawling through mud under heavy rain. It is one of the most highly anticipated events of one’s first semester at UWC, and yet, I remember far less than I would like to. Amongst these increasingly blurred memories, however, one moment stands out. The moment in which I finally came to terms with the fact that I was part of something larger than myself; the Holding Strong circle.
It was past noon. My body, like that of most of my friends, was betraying my sheer excitement. A half-eaten breakfast and an interrupted night of sleep were barely enough to sustain a day filled with physically and emotionally intense activities, and my unfit body was starting to give up. So was the weather, as menacing grey clouds began to creep from behind the mountains, carrying with them cold winds. We were congregated in the football field, the only open area in the camp big enough to hold all a hundred and something of us at once. There, our camp leaders organized us in a big circle and broke down to us the next activity.
Holding Strong has become a tradition at firstie camp. Every generation’s goal is the same: to break the previous record. The rules, simple. All physically able and mentally willing members of the generation must stand in a circle, so that everyone is sitting on the lap of the person behind them, and everyone has someone sitting on their lap. The result, a human chain sustained solely by the counterweight each body creates on those adjacent to it. Once the position has been solidified, all members of the chain must move in unison, trying to hold the position while walking in circles. From the moment the chain starts moving, someone takes the time. If the chain breaks or stops walking, the timer is reset. As a generation, you get three attempts to break the previously established record time and go down in history as the generation that was able to hold it the longest.
Nothing brings people together like a shared desire to bring down the enemy, even when that enemy is invisible, unknown, and (spoiler alert) completely made up. So, of course, I was as eager as everybody else to get this done. I was determined to put everything I had, to push every muscle in my body to its limit, to do anything needed for us to break that record. As we lowered into the position and pressed against each other as tightly as we could, holding the person in front of us like our very survival depended on it, we abandoned all egocentrism. This was no longer about me, or my tired legs, or my sense of personal space. This was about joining a mechanism, a hive mind of sorts that had one, and only one goal; to walk out victorious.
This is the part of the story in which I would like to tell how we stoically worked together to achieve our goal. How our minds and bodies were so aligned with each other that we smoothly completed the trial on our first attempt, and left no one behind. Unfortunately, real-life doesn’t work that way, and coordinating more than a hundred fatigued teenagers is harder than I had expected. We did not succeed. Frankly, I don’t think we came even close. Every single time we tried, someone’s foot slipped and caused a chain reaction that made us all fall. Someone’s legs weren’t strong enough and gave in to the pressure. Or simply, someone missed the beat and stepped with the wrong foot, causing everyone else to lose control. We walked away defeated, even more tired, and a little bit disappointed.
Looking back, however, I realize that we were never meant to succeed. Holding Strong wasn’t about us not falling, but about us getting back up. Each time someone slipped, or weakened, or missed, we would all have a good laugh and do it again. We would start over stronger, more motivated, shouting words of encouragement at each other, reminding ourselves not to give up. Holding Strong has never been about breaking someone else’s record, but creating our own. As we worked together towards a common goal, we learned to identify our individual needs. We figured out that each one of us had to be comfortable in order for the group to move forward. We discovered that what made us strong as a generation was that every individual trusted the person holding them, and cared about the person resting on them. As Alexander Dumas once superbly put it, it was about us being “one for all and all for one.”.
We may not have been a well-oiled machine. We had cogs that didn’t quite fit together, wheels that didn’t turn in synch, we were still learning how to match our tempos and become the grandiose orchestra that we were meant to be. But with our sweaty and tired bodies pushing against each other, one literal step at a time, we learned that our success as a generation did not translate into perfection, but togetherness. We realized it was not about each of us individually, but rather what we could achieve together. And so, our journey to overcome the arguably most challenging years of our lives began, hand in hand.
It was past noon. My body, like that of most of my friends, was betraying my sheer excitement. A half-eaten breakfast and an interrupted night of sleep were barely enough to sustain a day filled with physically and emotionally intense activities, and my unfit body was starting to give up. So was the weather, as menacing grey clouds began to creep from behind the mountains, carrying with them cold winds. We were congregated in the football field, the only open area in the camp big enough to hold all a hundred and something of us at once. There, our camp leaders organized us in a big circle and broke down to us the next activity.
Holding Strong has become a tradition at firstie camp. Every generation’s goal is the same: to break the previous record. The rules, simple. All physically able and mentally willing members of the generation must stand in a circle, so that everyone is sitting on the lap of the person behind them, and everyone has someone sitting on their lap. The result, a human chain sustained solely by the counterweight each body creates on those adjacent to it. Once the position has been solidified, all members of the chain must move in unison, trying to hold the position while walking in circles. From the moment the chain starts moving, someone takes the time. If the chain breaks or stops walking, the timer is reset. As a generation, you get three attempts to break the previously established record time and go down in history as the generation that was able to hold it the longest.
Nothing brings people together like a shared desire to bring down the enemy, even when that enemy is invisible, unknown, and (spoiler alert) completely made up. So, of course, I was as eager as everybody else to get this done. I was determined to put everything I had, to push every muscle in my body to its limit, to do anything needed for us to break that record. As we lowered into the position and pressed against each other as tightly as we could, holding the person in front of us like our very survival depended on it, we abandoned all egocentrism. This was no longer about me, or my tired legs, or my sense of personal space. This was about joining a mechanism, a hive mind of sorts that had one, and only one goal; to walk out victorious.
This is the part of the story in which I would like to tell how we stoically worked together to achieve our goal. How our minds and bodies were so aligned with each other that we smoothly completed the trial on our first attempt, and left no one behind. Unfortunately, real-life doesn’t work that way, and coordinating more than a hundred fatigued teenagers is harder than I had expected. We did not succeed. Frankly, I don’t think we came even close. Every single time we tried, someone’s foot slipped and caused a chain reaction that made us all fall. Someone’s legs weren’t strong enough and gave in to the pressure. Or simply, someone missed the beat and stepped with the wrong foot, causing everyone else to lose control. We walked away defeated, even more tired, and a little bit disappointed.
Looking back, however, I realize that we were never meant to succeed. Holding Strong wasn’t about us not falling, but about us getting back up. Each time someone slipped, or weakened, or missed, we would all have a good laugh and do it again. We would start over stronger, more motivated, shouting words of encouragement at each other, reminding ourselves not to give up. Holding Strong has never been about breaking someone else’s record, but creating our own. As we worked together towards a common goal, we learned to identify our individual needs. We figured out that each one of us had to be comfortable in order for the group to move forward. We discovered that what made us strong as a generation was that every individual trusted the person holding them, and cared about the person resting on them. As Alexander Dumas once superbly put it, it was about us being “one for all and all for one.”.
We may not have been a well-oiled machine. We had cogs that didn’t quite fit together, wheels that didn’t turn in synch, we were still learning how to match our tempos and become the grandiose orchestra that we were meant to be. But with our sweaty and tired bodies pushing against each other, one literal step at a time, we learned that our success as a generation did not translate into perfection, but togetherness. We realized it was not about each of us individually, but rather what we could achieve together. And so, our journey to overcome the arguably most challenging years of our lives began, hand in hand.
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