What do you think of when you think about a gift? Oftentimes I think of a cute plushie, or something related to an inside joke. But one of the most important gifts is the gift of presence (haha get it).
When CAUSE got invited to a League of Cities event honoring Assemblymember Mike Fong, I didn’t think much of it. It was in Alhambra, and the thought of driving all the way from my host office in El Segundo after a long day of work immediately turned me off the thought of it. Yet the moment I arrived at my office the next day, my district director called me into his office, asking me if we should go.
I was confused at first, wondering if the event was a bigger deal than I had initially assumed. It didn’t seem like it was meant to be a large affair, and seemed to be meant for locals. But over the course of my conversations with the district director and Nancy, the CAUSE Executive Director, I realized it wasn’t about the event, it was about the community.
My cohort members and I were all students, there was no benefit to inviting us. Yet we had been invited because we were part of CAUSE, and the event was being run by friends of CAUSE. Attending this event was not going to be some wonderful learning experience. But that wasn’t why we were going. We were going to support a friend who had put a lot of effort into planning the event, to support a community leader who deserved the recognition he was receiving at this event and so much more. It wasn’t about how this could help each other's careers, about providing something that they needed, it was simply about showing up. Our presence, the time and effort we were putting in to attend, the mere fact that we wanted to be there, was more than enough.
This is one of the things I have seen time and time again throughout my time at CAUSE, that if nothing else, the API community shows up for each other. I felt the value of this in the immense joy I felt seeing my host office at CAUSE’s soiree, or even in how happy family friends were when I went out of my way to spend time with them. Sometimes, just presence is enough.