Words are flying out like endless rain in through a paper cup… hums the musical soul, thrumming a guitar resting on his lap, sitting cross-legged, resting against the wall, at the far end of the room from me. Me, curled in a lotus position, echoing his thoughts about how we came to be here, the state of the world, hypocrisy of folk, and tonight’s dinner… Escaping into notes of the Beatles melody, both of us knew that world was cruel, that life was pointless, and that it was hard. It. Being a volunteer.
That is how we had come to know each other, three long years back. Volunteers for a ‘social cause’. Embraced into the welcoming folds of righteous feeling, passion, and collective conscious of our associates, we had taken up the yoke to return in time and set right the un-rights. It has been a long journey, across stereotypes and beliefs, hopes and trust, across oceans and seas, love, hate, beauty, hospitals, slums, villages, people, words, emails, blueprints, plans, schools, songs, and literally half the way across the world. Yup, this currently octopus shaped cynic, and his guitar-possessing optimist.
Armed with the wand of change, we swept across human-inhabited (and otherwise) geographical spaces, waving our magic hither and tither. And every once in a while, we would come up with the same thought as we were manifesting now – how did we get here again?
It, volunteering, is hard. Why is it hard, you might ask… What is there so much to it? Isn’t it just a matter of educating the poor to break the vicious circle of poverty? Isn’t it just talking to people to make them aware of social issues? Isn’t is just about being socially minded so as to make a better world?
Oh no, that is the tragedy it has become. In fact, it isnt. It is, simply put, about thought, change, and delusion.
With great power comes great responsibility (Plato’s ‘Gorgias’). And a volunteer is armed with the greatest of powers – of change. Change is, in a way, the creation of something new. Thus a volunteer has the power of creation. The same power attributed to God, in all religious faiths. And this power has immense capacity. Thus making a volunteer intensely responsible for her/his world. What (s)he does with this power is what makes volunteering hard.
A question to begin with could be, what am I working for? Which will probably be shortly followed by what am I doing? Of course the question of who am I doing this for and is this what they really need or what are we doing to them would come up somewhere in the body of thought. These thoughts will probably take you to change. Change. Not of others, not of someone you work for, but of yourself. However, you probably wouldn’t have come to a satisfactory conclusion for your questions, which would probably continue through your change, questioning your change. Soon, you would have a Plato-Socratic battle raging in your head (and heart) – they are of the poor, I should help educate them to break the cycle of poverty; but is education the answer? Isn’t education just conditioning you to conform to society; and isn’t the heart of the problem within the system of the society itself? But what else can I do? Shouldn’t I be doing something? Should I be doing something? Who am I to decide what is best for someone else? What is good, what is bad? So what must I do?
And finally, you reconcile by doing something to smother the raging fire of your thoughts. Welcome to delusion.
Amidst all this, you would have travelled through the most passionate of beliefs, the best of friends, the heights of love, the top notches of efficiency, the worst of heartbreaks… And finally, you and me, we end up in this room, pondering about our dinner, and losing ourselves Across the Universe as we try to negotiate life. It is hard. It better be. If not, its time to start thinking.
[this article, titled 'Confessions of a volunteer', has been written by the author of this post as an entry to a social work organisation magazine. If published, the rights to this article will belong to that magazine and the publishing organisation. Until then, it falls under the general rights policy that this blog follows.]
[this article is dedicated, with love, to all the new volunteers at the above mentioned social work organisation, and the guitar-possessing optimist soul]
0 Responses to “Confessions of a volunteer”