Darryl Lim’s Experience (Facilitator) [he/him]

You have all inspired me. I write this during the night after Prayer Meeting, the final showcase by this batch of participants. It’s tough to express my evening’s experience in words because what I had witnessed was honesty, more honesty, and even more honesty. To craft one’s unique place in a team is a tough thing to do because each person’s place is so damn special. And because of that uniqueness - that beauty and that truth - one cannot simply emulate or even try to model after another.

I write this in fear.

It’s a kind of fear that grips me because what we are approaching through the work on the self is surely something so unique to each of us - so unique that one sometimes doubt if one is going the ‘right’ way? And yet - what is the right way?

A dear friend once shared that just as the actor-participants trust the director-facilitator during the rehearsing and/or devising phase, the director-facilitator has to give absolute trust to the actor-participants during the performance, because there is nothing to be done. Nothing to be done. It’s a reminder that one has to let go. It’s a call - a call to accept. A call to resign to not rejecting. And when one resigns, one sees. One witnesses the wonder of a human being.

During this journey, I witnessed, for myself, the possibility of caring, of receiving care, and of holding space with another. A moment emptied of words. A moment within which love flows. I remember working with one of the participants on a very particular evening. I experienced the concerted crafting of a place for the both of us, such that what was achieved was an acceptance. An acceptance of failure. An acceptance of struggle. And of a human being by another. I saw the wonders of what was (and is) possible via relating to another.

Tonight, as a facilitator standing outside the performance, I saw Joash’s crafting of a place of his own through dance. I saw Sreya’s resolute walking towards the front of the performance space. I saw Jun De’s playing with his monologue and his stretching into a pillar of salt. I saw Ella’s intense slapping as she was personalising a group action, and I saw Damien’s caring for one and all of the team. Xin Rui was having fun with the monologue on cancer as he was flying over people, and Ci Xuan’s total surrendering during her prayer included a certain moving in her feet - something that belonged only to her. I witnessed Clement’s resigning when he approached that number. 3.7. A resigning when he was running forward, yet on the spot, while desiring forward. And I began to wonder. I was in awe. I am still in awe. I wonder because these reveal the beginning of a journey for each of us, including myself. I’m in awe at the potential of each journey. It was and is the beginning of something greater. Something so much greater and more significant than just the self. It’s much more than the work on the self, isn’t it?

Isn’t it time? Isn’t it time to accept and to resign, such that our capacity for wonder can be tested and tried? What’s behind that number?