Service

A particularly potent lesson that I’ve learned in recent years is that I don’t hate doing service.  As a child and teenager it seemed like I was constantly being forced to do service projects.  When I was a kid I had to help clean up little league baseball fields; as a teenager I helped with numerous Eagle Scout projects (which were so often building trails); my church youth groups were always cooking up some scheme to go to a rest home or fix up someone’s yard; during my first year in college I was part of a “service learning” course, which was a disaster.   

 

As an adult, I still strongly dislike doing most of these “service project” activities.  Let me be clear: I am not opposed to doing them.  I think that there will always be elderly people to talk to, local trails to clean up, someone to help move, etc.  What I'm saying is that I derive no joy or satisfaction from these activities.  I can honestly say that after a hard day’s work building a trail I've never felt anything but regret for having missed out on other things I could have been doing.  When I’ve gone to rest homes I’ve been creeped out by the medical environment and never really enjoyed talking to anyone.  Ultimately, that sense of satisfaction that some people describe after having done this kinds of service has proven to be as illusory as those magic eye pictures that were so popular in the 90s; no matter how hard I try, I just can’t get it.  (Really, I’ve never seen anything in a magic eye picture except chaotic paint.)

 

Which is fine with me.  I also don’t really care if I feel good after helping someone out.  Practically speaking, I’ll do what I have to do and won't do what I don't.  However, what I've learned as an adult is that service projects don’t have to be activities that are inevitably miserable.  I remember last year when I helped out on a local, non-profit music festival.  I was sitting in a planning meeting one day and it suddenly dawned on me that I was participating in service.  And it was something that I enjoyed.  Later, I discovered that people had been volunteering at a local art gallery and counting that time as service hours for their own service learning courses.  I was amazed.  This stuff was fun and service-oriented.  As I considered more, I realized that there are all sorts of things that can be enjoyable and service at the same time.  More importantly, different people’s understanding of what is fun doesn’t mean that some will simply and inevitably enjoy service more than others.  It just means that they should be doing different kinds of service projects.

 

In the end I hope we can begin to shift our ideas about service in a couple of ways.  First, I hope that we can be more creative with what we do.  If your neighbor is moving and you help out, your task is pretty clear.  On the other hand, if you’re an educator, scout leader, religious leader, etc., be aware that there are a lot of options out there.  If you’re setting up a service learning course, for example, take into account that your students may like the idea of service learning a whole lot more if they can find service opportunities they enjoy and believe are worth doing.  While those opportunities may not be the ones that you find most rewarding, limiting their options will probably only turn them off to service generally.  Sure, if you impose your agenda they’ll have to do service to get the grade, but will they continue to do it afterward? 

 

The second thing I hope we do is change our ideas about service.  In my mind the word “service” has a strong negative connotation because it means doing things I either don’t like, don’t believe are worth while, or both.  Thus, I hope that we can broaden the definition of service to include both traditional activities, as well as other things that people might enjoy.  Though those activities will differ from person to person, learning to understand service in this way will hopefully help more people to make positive contributions to society and see service as an opportunity rather than a chore.