Every Torchlight ends the same way.

A director says “We can!..” and a few hundred campers and staff yell back “DO HARD THINGS!!!”

Then we name the durable skill of the night. A few nights ago, that skill was optimism, and I asked the campers to define it.

Hands went up and they had ideas.

Being positive. Silver linings. Looking on the bright side.

One of our older campers said, “The bright light at the end of the tunnel of whatever it is you’re going through,” which I thought was pretty good.

I told them I loved all of those definitions, and wanted to add one to the mix.

The definition I wanted to add

Optimism is believing that you have the ability to influence the world around you.

A positive attitude definitely helps. But the belief underneath it, the one I want every camper to carry home, sounds like this:

I can make a choice to have a good day. I can make somebody else’s day better. I have the ability to author my own adventure.

The opposite belief is “the world happens to me.” A kid carrying that one is at the mercy of whatever is happening around them.

So camp spends two weeks stacking situation after situation that repeat the same message: you have agency here. And on the other side of agency is optimism.

A lake in their backyard

Every session, campers choose their favorite activities.

The most popular results barely change: tubing, skiing, wakeboarding, sailing, archery, fine arts, sports, and the ropes courses.

Part of that is novelty. Few kids have a lake or a climbing wall in their backyard.

But there’s a pattern in the list too.

With the possible exception of tubing, every one of those activities is something a camper can get better at, and the process of getting better belongs entirely to them. Nobody can learn to wakeboard for you.

That feeling of earned progress is the seed of the optimism I’m talking about. Progression builds competence, competence builds confidence, and confidence strengthens everything else.

Three loops, running all day

The first loop is activity progression. The camper who couldn’t get up on skis Tuesday gets up on Friday, and she knows exactly who made that happen (her).

The second loop is choices. Five activity periods a day means five chances to pick something, see how it goes, and pick differently tomorrow. We wrote last year about the decision tree, and this is that idea in motion.

School hands kids plenty of responsibility (learn the material, be ready for the test, turn in the homework) but very few real choices about the shape of their day. Camp runs on choices every day.

The third loop is reflection. Every cabin closes each day with the same two questions: what was great about today, and if you could go back and try one thing again, what would you do differently?

Counselors answer too, modeling reflection right alongside the kids.

These three steps create a loop and those loops grow with the camper:

• Our youngest campers learn to have agency over their day
• One step older, the dynamics of their cabin
• Older still, influence within their age group
• By the senior camper program, they can affect the whole camp if they decide to

The part you can’t get at a water park

Fun is everywhere in summer. A water park can give your kid an incredibly fun day.

The part you can’t get at a water park is stacking progression, choices, and reflections together for two straight weeks.

It’s the repetition of these loops that create this specific type of growth.

When we asked about optimism at Torchlight, the campers gave good answers. Positive attitude matters. So does finding the bright side.

But after two weeks of choosing, trying, reflecting, and choosing again, I hope every camper heads home with one more:

I have the ability to influence the world around me.

That’s agency. That’s optimism. That’s a powerful self-narrative.

Erec Sir