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Catching up with old classmates? No thanks!

If that’s your reaction to the prospect of meeting up with your old classmates then rest assured you are not alone – we could all be twins or at least cousins.

There is nothing quite like the journey of self-discovery that is undertaken by a counsellor in training. As we buy the expensive ticket for our next 2 or 3 years of study, we ponder on our experiences that have brought us to this station. We feel triumphant (or is that smug) and why not? Hey, didn’t we survive our childhood without too many quirks, haven’t we climbed over or through our fair share of life’s obstacles, some the size of mountains and others more like never ending troughs of thick custard. We’ve tunnelled through the dark times, and while doing all these feats of emotional endurance, we’ve simultaneously just lived the normal life, working (sometimes too hard) built a career, (succeeding and failing) and having relationships, (we won’t even go there). Plus, like everyone else, we try to take care of a body that sometimes takes us down like an unexpected rugby tackle. We wear our scars perhaps a little too proudly.

As we boldly board the train to training at the station platform designated, you believe, for those of us who are all evolved and sorted, we who are at our peak – all we need to solve the problems of others is the training. How wrong could we have been.

The whistle blows, and off we go, and just like in Agatha Christies ‘Death on the Orient Express’, the encounters in the carriage can be claustrophobic and tense, the air could sometimes be cut with an insensitive word, the tensions palpable, the fear of being question, to tell your story, the fear of the fear to keep it hidden. What will your silence say about you? What about the full and frank confession, if not to a crime, then at least to your many indiscretions. The journey to qualification is paved with potholes of failure, owned up to, filed and smoothed over. There are of course the encounters that feel like a little murder and those that get off the train early unable to go on. There are brilliant moments too, insights that could never be had we not been sitting with the other passengers, looking at them, looking at us as we performed under the spotlight shining the light on our shortcomings.

We emerge from training transformed, smug no longer, we know our frailties, understand our faults and recognise that we are never to arrive, that we have signed up to the lifetime of learning just what it is to be us and to be useful along the way. Like disoriented passengers spilling into the natural light, we are more concerned with finding our way on the next leg of the journey than clinging on to our fellow passengers. Was it a whistle-stop journey? Yes, breath-stealing, invigorating and undeniably wonderful. Was it painfully slow? Yes, moments of torture and agony through all the carriages we shared with our fellow passengers and in the little bunks where we settle ourselves to sleep and make damp sponges of our pillows.

So yes – I have a foot the camp of ‘No Way’ when it comes to reunions. But the more I reflect about the journey with my fellow students the more I recognise what a privilege it was. For sure I remember less about their stories and more about the distance I travelled, and I’m sure it is the same for them. We were probably all feeling the same fears and insecurities and grappling with the struggle to show up, with the risk being judged. But we did it. We faced our fears and did it anyway. So why not seek out the people who witnessed that, who rooted for you, who empathised and showed compassion. Who might remember your words that made a difference to them on their journey?

Do you, like me, find something tantalising about the prospect of seeing your study buddies again, it could turn out to be the crock of gold at the journey’s end.