Spring has sprung, the flowers will soon emerge from their subterranean winter refuge and flip-flops, shorts and skirts will soon work their way back into regular sartorial rotation.
Sure, there’s some lingering sadness accompanying the close of ski season, but we now have months and months of warm, hot and hotter weather on the way, filled with hiking, biking, camping, fishing, boating and whatever else it is we do here in Zion to fill the leisure days following final exams and projects.
Although having fun, relaxing and chillin’ with a cold beer on the front porch, even at 9 on a Tuesday morning, is surely important and a perfectly valid way to spend your summer interregnum, I would like to take what space I have left to advocate for a variation on the theme of Causes Greater Than Yourself.
Sometimes it might seem like we hardly have time enough for our routine responsibilities. Donating precious free time to a good cause is one of those things that everyone wishes he or she did, but no one really wants to do. The problem might be one of apathy or maybe atrophy. After all, it seems like a lot of work to get up early and head down to the women’s shelter or the community center, and besides, what good is your individual contribution?
But when you finally chase away your Saturday night fever with Sunday morning Bloody Marys, you might do well to ponder, if only for an instant, what a little gesture can do, not only for your sense of worth and accomplishment but for the wider community of which you are an integral part.
Think homeless people smell bad and give you creepy looks? Fine, don’t volunteer at the homeless shelter.
Does your heart break when you see hundreds of kennel-bound hounds at the pound? Steer clear of the Humane Society.
What about the crushed beer cans and candy wrappers and Tuesday junk mail littering your street? Commune with garbage if you can’t bear to look in the eyes of a woman who has been beaten and battered psychologically and physically.
Or how about just helping out that old lady across the street? You know, the one who gets rightfully pissed when you and your friends throw all-night keggers and blast Gnarls Barkley’s soulfully hip-hop tunes out your top-floor window? It looks like she needs some help getting that ’50s-era icebox out to the curb to make way for her new Frigidaire. You might catch a whiff of her mothball perfume, but you’ll manage. And maybe next time she’ll hold off on calling the cops.
The point is, even the tiniest gesture matters. Making one little old lady happy might be just as fulfilling, on a deep emotional level, as endeavoring to change the world through microfinance internships in Somalia and Peace Corps programs in Far East villages with starving children.
And cleaning up trash isn’t just for garbage collectors, who, by the way, don’t actually care for the euphemism “sanitation engineers” — they collect trash and find euphemisms for their line of work demeaning and condescending, as do all groups who are the erstwhile beneficiaries of liberal PC labels that do more harm than good.
Anyway, just know that making the world a better place doesn’t have to be the life-consuming affair as it’s sometimes portrayed, but it just might change your life.