Out of Time, Not Chances

Finally with a new job and a new neighborhood settled after an arduous search for both, I turn myself toward the extra things I have been noncommittal towards in my state of flux. Board invitations, freelance projects, volunteer responsibilities, all. It’s an honest juggling act to balance these things with the rest of life. 

My sister, gone from us now almost two years, taught me the true meaning of service. I feel her absence in my life, and the particular absence of that inner richness that only comes from true devoted service to another. But I find myself suddenly weighing all my new commitments against my time, energy and health. I want to add the volunteering and the this and the that—only two or three hours a week, I tell myself. But I fear overextending myself mentally and physically, and struggling with health constraints amid a strict calendar. It’s a dilemma that I have doodled and fawned over for a few weeks before realizing two things:

• I’m no use to anyone anywhere if I’m worn out, exhausted, sick, cranky, or otherwise spent from trying to do everything.

• My yearning to serve might be utilized just as well by practicing deeper service to the people already in my life: colleagues, family, friends, neighbors.

Sometimes we have even more stringent boundaries with the people that inhabit our daily lives simply because they are the ones that have direct access to our vulnerabilities and emotions. Offering two hours a week to a stranger is much less daring in some ways than offering deeper attention, less judgement, or more compassion to the people we interact with at home and at work.

There are certainly times in our lives when volunteerism is a health necessity. When we find ourselves with too much time on our hands due to unemployment, illness recovery, or any circumstance that leaves us too often in our own heads and feeling isolated and lonely. That is when we most need to step outside our comfort zone and reach out to folks that are willing to have us simply because they need the extra hand.

Either way there seems an endless supply of chances to serve one another, if we want it.