do more volunteer work

I’ve started volunteering with CASA monitoring parents on Saturdays who can’t be alone with their children. It’s volunteer work but it doesn’t feel like it should. When you volunteer you’re supposed to work hard and feel like you’ve done some good. That’s the most rewarding part, working hard to better someone else’s life. But this didn’t feel like that. I spent the morning depressed and on the verge of tears. Reading through some of the cases made me angry at the justice system. Sure some of these cracked out, abusive parents needed to be monitored (no sympathy there), but some parents didn’t deserve to be in there. They got handed a harsh deal by the system. Looking at the love these parents clearly had for their children, and the love their children had for them was devastating. Two days out of the month for two hours … there’s a fee … and it’s monitored. That’s not good enough. I’d be writing my congressman/woman every damn day. It’s not enough.

Today I served meals to the hungry with my mother’s biker club. And I realized something, I love volunteer work. I never slack off when I’m doing it either. Even if it’s difficult. It’s more than the fact that I’m helping others (although that’s the best part), I also feel better about myself at the end of the day. Maybe it’s because the world is so “I” oriented. Everyone’s looking out for themselves and their own interests. When you take a moment to focus on someone else, their life, their problems, and what you can do to help, it feels fantastic. You may not always know how to help yourself but you can always help others when the solution is simple. And if that’s serving meals, or cleaning up highways, or donating clothes (clothes that I knew didn’t fit when I bought them), then count me in, I’m there. Maybe I finally grasped the true volunteer spirit, no wonder volunteers are always so abnormally cheerful.