Everything I’ve ever read about how to spot a World Racer is true.
It’s September 8th, a Tuesday morning at the Atlanta Airport Hotel North, and already there is a noticeable theme amoungst the 300 twenty-something’s milling around the hallways and conference rooms. You could throw a pen and hit someone with a loosely bundled cluster of dreads. Patagonia hats are the only things more commonplace than thick-soled Chacos, at least half of us have more than three tattoos, and flannel = everything.
We definitely have a “look”.
Walking down the hallways, you pass rooms with doors propped open, inviting you to pop in and say hello at any hour, with snippets of conversations ranging from “I have a jar of peanut butter, if we all wanna share a spoon?”, “I dropped a whole packing cube full of leggings,” and “My friend said she only got malaria twice.”
When you join the World Race, you can expect to hear, see, and talk about certain things over, and over, and over again. Whether that’s your wardrobe, body modification, or your decreasing standards of cleanliness due to community living, some things form pillars of down-time conversation and in turn, inform your actions. So while I fully expected to come on the Race and get a chance to live for Jesus in the dirt while embracing my inner Burning Man wannabe, I didn’t expect to have quite so many conversations centered around personality tests.
Now, when I wrote about this subject before, it was written out of a place of much frustration, most of which stemmed from some poorly-handled and surface-level conversation I found myself involved in only because of my MB results.
Lately, however, I’ve begun to see the relational fruits of being on a squad that is extremely intentional with knowing and understanding one another – even if that looks like seriously over-analyzing internet quizzes. (Love you, Y-Squad!)
The 5 Love Languages are as follows:
Words of Affirmation
Quality Time
Gifts
Acts of Service
Physical Touch
In case you aren’t familiar with Gary Chapman’s The 5 Love Languages, they’re supposed to be the main ways we humans expresses love emotionally, and how we each best show and receive affection.
When talk about "Love Languages" first started circulating the squad back at Launch in September, I only started really thinking about it when, one night during an all-squad hammock, someone rolled over and asked, “Who here has an LL of Physical Touch?” The response was, well, overwhelming.
Most people on the squad did. And there I lay, alone in my double-nester, blissfully unaware that I had just been introduced with what would soon become one of my biggest hurdles in loving and serving my squad.
(Our first night together, when we fit 23 sleeping people into a one-bedroom apartment.)
Hear me on this: it’s not that I hate being touched or that I hate touching others. It’s just not. Being touched by people I love is, to me, the most intimate way to demonstrate understanding and create a feeling of safety. But left to my own free will, I would never think to reach out and put a hand on someone around me. Personal space, to me, is as simple as that: there is a space, and that space is personal.
Like, I will probably never wonder if you still love me if we walk past one other and you don’t stop to koala-hug it or reach out and squeeze my arm.
But relationships are funny things; sometimes, they gently demand things you hadn’t planned to give away. Sometimes, if not all times, you need to place your priorities and those “But it’s just the way I am” preferences below those of the other person, for the sake of love.
Last month, when I started understanding the importance of giving love in a way that’s understood by the receiver, I began going out of my way to make this happen in my squad. The first chance I took was with a squad-mate who got sick on a bus ride.
Outwardly, I gently put my hand on her back, and scratched it while she sat with her head in her hands.
Inwardly, though, the dialogue looked like this:
I was freaking out. I was rubbing her back and actually turned and looked out the opposite window. I FELT SO AWKWARD.
But that was okay.
I felt pretty awkward the first time I rode a bike, too. Fell over a lot. In fact, don’t we all feel awkward the first time we do lots of things?!
But if there is any reason to get way out of your comfort zone, it’s for the sake of love and relationship. And in order to show love to my squad, that has looked like being way more intentional with reaching out, and connecting through touch.
For all future and current Racers: there is a right and wrong way to do this. Connecting through touch is different for guys and girls, and also between guys and girls – as it should be. Showing love shouldn’t be an excuse to feel up someone you think is cute, any more than me demonstrating my love through Gift-giving shouldn’t involve me continually giving things to advance my own agenda.
The bottom line is this: sometimes, it's about you, and sometimes it isn't. And that in order to love well, you may need to be willing to try new means of communication, and have those super awkward moments.
It’s also okay if your love language is not a physical one. While it’s true that the World Race attracts a certain type of person, it wouldn’t be the melting pot of diversity and giftings if we were all the embodiment of whatever stereotype exists. Introverts, extroverts, huggers, doers and intellectuals – we need them all.
So bring your flannels, bring your peanut butter, bring your essential oils and bring your Patagonia. But don’t forget to bring your love. You might just find that in order to experience deeper community, you learn how to speak a new language.