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Becoming
Public Citizens and Volunteers
by Kent M. Keith
 The
world will change when more and more people carve out time from their busy
schedules to raise questions, challenge assumptions, set high standards, and
pitch in to help each other.
The
meaning that people find in their work and families will be magnified by the
meaning they find as community leaders, public citizens, and volunteers.
Millions
of Americans find meaning by participating in the daily work of nonprofit
organizations. Immense good is being done by tens of thousands of organizations
such as the YMCA, Salvation Army, and Catholic Charities, as well as service
clubs like Rotary, Lions, Kiwanis, and Exchange. Nonprofit organizations have a
public purpose and private flexibility. They are about people pitching in to
make things better in our communities. Some have an international impact.
A good
example is the polio eradication program launched by Rotary International in
1985. At the time the program started, polio was common throughout the world.
Rotary decided to save the world's children from this disease and eradicate
polio. Since then, Rotarians and their partner agencies have immunized more
than two billion children and reduced polio from 350,000 cases in 1988 to fewer
than 1,900 in 2002. It is estimated that more than four million children who might
have contracted polio have been saved from the disease.
Rotarians have raised
more than $500 million, and many have traveled to other countries to assist
directly in distributing the polio vaccine. As a politically neutral nonprofit
organization, Rotary International was the perfect vehicle to work on a
humanitarian project that crossed national borders. This volunteer effort has
had a huge, tangible impact. When they started, Rotarians must have seen the
eradication of polio as an overwhelming task. But they decided to make a
difference anyway. They are only a
few years away from complete victory.
Greg
Kemp is a successful real estate developer who volunteers his time to build
homes for families in other countries. He says: It all started when my
wife, Annie, and I were traveling by train in mainland China. People along the
railroad tracks were huddled late at night around an open fire pit. Their homes
were in a garbage dump, built from scrap materials. Seeing them had a big
impact on me. What hope do they have? What will happen to their children?
The sight continued to haunt me. A few months later, we
were driving near Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, and saw a billboard for Habitat for
Humanity. I was curious, so the next day I visited its website. I liked what I
saw and immediately signed us up for a Habitat Global Village team that was
going to Manukau, New Zealand, an area populated mostly by Maori. We went there
and built a home in three weeks. There were eighteen of us, including a judge
from New York, a nurse from Alaska, a flight attendant from Florida, a school
teacher from Chicago, a retired Episcopalian priest from New Mexico, and an
insurance administrator from New Hampshire. The youngest was thirteen, and the
oldest was eighty-two.
Next, we signed up for a Habitat Global Village team in
the Monteverde cloud forest in Costa Rica. We built two homes in three weeks.
We took two teens from the United States and Canada to that project. The teens
were in need of a life-changing experience, and they got it.
We travel to areas of the world with disease and
strangelooking bugs. We might get a clean change of clothes once a week. We get
blisters on our hands, and many sore body parts. But there are all those hugs
from the local families for whom we are building new homes. We know we have
made the world a better place for them to live. We know we have shown people
all over the world that we are willing not only to write a check, but to pick
up a hammer. I hope that some day, Habitat will be able to build homes for the
families along that railroad line in China.
Judy
Asman wanted to be a medical missionary ever since she was ten years old and
read an article in Reader's Digest about
medical missionaries in Ecuador. After a career as a nurse and a hospital
administrator, she made her dream come true in 1999, when she joined the Aloha
Medical Mission to Laos. She remembers it vividly:
The mission lasted two weeks, including travel, set up,
and five days of surgery. There were thirty-two doctors, nurses, and staff, and
each of us donated our time and travel expenses to get there. We went to a
small, dirt-road town in northern Laos, to a village with a small, one-story
hospital. We brought in some of our own equipment and medicine. Hundreds of
people came out of the mountains, lined up, and camped out near the hospital
while we were there. They were from tribal clans. We took stuffed animals and
toys for the kids to play with while they were waiting. We also took used
clothing and bags of school supplies to give away.
We did two days' triage. We tried to find people who
needed surgeries that we could perform that would heal while we were there, so
they wouldn't need follow-up care after we were gone. We did surgeries on cleft
lips, burns, and goiters. The surgeons operated from 7:00 A.M. to
11:00 P.M., because there were so many people who needed
help. I did incisions, drainage of abscesses, antibiotics, sutures,
postoperative care. In just five days we provided medical and surgical care for
over five hundred people. It was totally exhausting and deeply satisfying.
Why did I go? I went to be a caring presence. I wanted the
Laotians to know that there are kind and gentle people in the world who care
about them, and will come to help them without expecting anything in return.
They were such lovely people! They were so gracious, so grateful and giving,
even though they were very poor and malnourished. I learned from them. They
opened up my eyes to another world.
Working for change may or may not
be the road to "success." But it is a road filled with meaning and deep
happiness. People who understand that fact will lead the way. They will not be
worried about personal success; they will be worried about saving millions of
lives and eventually the life of the planet itself.
Raising
the Next Generation
In the Earthsea series, Ursula Le Guin
chronicles the tale of Ged, the boy who became a wizard and traveled throughout
the land, fighting evil. After many adventures, he fought a final battle
against a powerful evil. He won, but the battle left him exhausted. He had used
up all his magical powers in the cause of good and had become a mere mortal. He
started a new life as a goatherd on a hillside in his homeland, living with the
woman he loved, raising the child who would become the new wizard. He discovered
meaning and satisfaction that he had never known during his years as a "dragon
lord" and "archmage."
If we,
too, exhaust ourselves in the fight for what is right and good and true, there
will be new meaning and satisfaction for us as well. And we can raise the new
wizards who will fight the good fight after we are gone.
Gandhi
said that "satisfaction lies in the effort, not in the attainment. Full effort
is full victory."
The paradoxical life is a life of full effort. You can change
the world by loving people, doing good, succeeding, being honest and frank,
thinking big, fighting for underdogs, building, helping people, and giving the
world your best. You can change the world and find personal meaning and deep
happiness at the same time. You can make a difference by just deciding to do it anyway.
Don't
wait to make a difference. Do it now.
The
world may be crazy, but it doesn't have to
be!
This article was excerpted from the book:
 Do It Anyway: Finding Personal Meaning and Deep
Happiness by Living the Paradoxical Commandments by Kent M. Keith.
Reprinted with permission of the publisher, New World Library, Novato, CA. ©2008. www.newworldlibrary.com or 800-972-6657 ext. 52.
For More Info or to Order This Book.
About the Author
Kent M. Keith is the author of Do It Anyway, Jesus Did it
Anyway and Anyway: The Paradoxdical
Commandments. He has appeared in
national media from Today to the New York Times. A former attorney and university president,
he is a popular speaker on finding personal meaning in a chaotic world. His website is www.kentmkeith.com. Visit him also at www.paradoxicalcommandments.com.
More books by this author.
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