Community Service and Excellence

This was my essay when I applied for the Ten Outstanding Senior Students (TOSS) in my university.

What to you is the meaning of community service?

Community service defines who you are. It is the consummation of your ultimate gift—the ability to make a life-altering influence. By it service is driven to a sincere, noble admonition to do good for others—to be a brother who listens and gives a hand to the struggling soul; to be a leader who makes good examples prevail, not for status building but for spreading the virtue of selfless humanity. Community service is walking behind and beside the people comprising the environment you can reach—those who long to have a name for themselves, those whose vision for a good future has been lost. It is an intentional lifestyle of empowering others, so that they will be involved, so that they will see themselves in the picture, so that they will appreciate where they are. It is never dragged or pushed by anything lower than the desire to fulfil the goal of education which is to have a sense of being. And to have a sense of being, you simply have to give. You have to serve.

What is the significance of excellence and being outstanding in today’s society?

Excellence and being outstanding signify your place. Being an inhabitant of that place, your name is a signpost of purpose and meaning. These two adjectives—excellent and outstanding—do not carry merits of their own because it is you who create them. They are nothing without your say; they are empty without your permission to let them be. They are significant because they keep the society’s evolving nature—to recognize what is new and deal with anything that is new, to make sense of setbacks as they surprise every struggle to be advanced, to explore ways of learning, and to unlearn whatever stopped the cycle of growth. Excellence is your testimony of passion as a unique creation sharing others’ desire to go beyond convention. You are outstanding in your quest to make a difference, whatever it takes. And then the place where you are rises. And it rises to be known. And whoever comes to know of it either gets to be outstanding and excellent.