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Posts tagged ‘volunteering’

Jan 31

50 Comments

Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?

Members of Rotary Friendship Exchange visit Rotarians in Northampton, England. June 2010.

People ask me all the time why I’m involved in a Rotary Club. Why, when there are so many other things vying for my time, do I devote hours per week to a boys’ club for tired old men?

I’m not going to wow readers with the litany of things Rotary does around the world. The list is too long. People don’t like to read. Things can quickly get overwhelming and bleed into other things.

My passion for Rotary is simple: Rotary promotes peace and goodwill among the nations of the world through service.

It took my involvement in Rotary to understand something fundamental about human beings.

We’re all the same.

Yep. That’s right. Regardless of what our divisive mainstream media would have us to believe, human beings, at our core, are identical. We need food and water. To survive, we require a form of shelter. Most of us wear basic clothing. However we protest, we all need love and crave the care of others. No matter our skin color, our beliefs about the hereafter, our ages, our accents, our backgrounds, our politics or our stations in life, we’re all in this together, working for the same shared necessities.

Thanks to Rotary, I manage to see the world that way *most* of the time. Embracing our common spirit made me curious of divergent points of view, and it forced me to see things through the eyes of others. It sucked me out of my comfort zone and compelled me to face my own prejudices. Rotary made me realize that giving shards of my time to another person is what transmogrifies rushing busyness into wholesome, unfettered peace, the fire that turns minutes into diamonds.

This year is going to be trying for many of us. It’s an election year in America. If you’re as sick as I am of opening your social media news feeds and reading lines-in-the-sand, division, blanket statements and rampant intolerance, try taking a portion of that time and flinging it into something like Rotary instead. Whether we can fix our country is still a question mark for me, but we can make an impact in the lives of others.

One investment at a time.

What do you do to better understand the people around you, Dear Reader?


Oct 2

22 Comments

Put On Your Happy Feet

Twelve years old. Hormones raging. Personality invaded by aliens. Livid with the universe for giving me gangly feet. And, Nike was all I wanted to slip on those feet that year: canvas shoes, white, light blue swoosh. Everybody had that shoe, and at twelve, I wanted to be like them.

I’m not really sure, but I think my Mom struggled to outfit me in the latest crazes. Izod gators on a couple of shirts. Aigner A on my purse and belt. Levi on my rear end. And, of course, the light blue Nike swoosh. The world would crumble if I didn’t have the swoosh. Like most pubescent junior high schoolers, I didn’t care whether my parents could put food on the table or pay the electric bill, or God forbid, indulge in something special for themselves.

I pouted and begged and nagged and tantrum-ed my way to the swooshie blue pair of my dreams. And, of course, I tired of them as soon as everyone decided something else was cool. I never worried about whether or not I had shoes. My parents always provided.

Somehow.

These days, parents struggle more than ever. Layoffs and pay cuts and hiring freezes and Tough Economic Times add up to more needy people, families that might look fine on the surface. But, they’re anything but fine underneath.

I spent Saturday morning with some of those families, helping needy kids select a pair of shoes for school through Rotary Happy Feet. Each child arrived at Target with an admission ticket issued by their school. Rotary volunteers measured their feet and were aghast to find some kids wearing shoes up to two sizes too small. Armed with the right measurements, volunteer shoppers helped kids select one pair of school-appropriate footwear. Another team carried them to checkout.

Rotary International picked up the tab for all of it. Almost $4,000 in shoes for 200 children. Their feet were supposed to be happy, but the smiles on the faces of children and parents alike – THAT’S what made me tickled to give up my Saturday morning.

I wonder. Would I have been as gracious when I was a spoiled pre-teen, standing in their shoes?

Too Much is Just Enough: Giving Back

 

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