Giving Back (Part 2)

Always be selfless.

What if adults only always said ‘yes’? What would happen?

Nothing. The past year I lived through saying ‘yes’ a lot. I said yes to volunteering in my community. I said yes to teaching at university. I said yes to being a part of an admissions committee. And I said yes to going back to school full time while working a full time job and doing all the aforementioned. This is all in addition to my commitment to myself, which was to continually exercising, eating well, taking care of myself, and hanging out with friends. I did it all.

Was it a stretch at times? Yes — ALOT. But, was it worth it? Absolutely. I loved every bit of it and I wouldn’t change it at all. Like anything and everything, there were the hills and valleys, and at times I asked myself if I took in much more than I could chew, but in the end it was well worth it.

There is nothing more and better than the feeling to give back. I loved volunteering as a kid and even if the framework only required 40 hours, I did much, much more. I loved giving back not because I wanted the fame or credibility, but I loved it because I felt valuable and that my time was being well used by someone else who needed it. Just like investing in stocks, investing my time in someone else also gave me dividends — a sense of belonging, a sense of usefulness, a sense of gratitude. There’s nothing more fulfilling than that.

So, what’s with the hesitation that I see without other people in saying ‘yes’ all the time? If it’s so fulfilling why do adults say ‘no’, and what’s with the hesitation in saying ‘yes’?.

What I notice with adults that I see much less in kids is their ability to calculate. I’m not referring to 1+1=2, I’m referring to “if I do X, what will I get from it? What is the Y I will get?”

As adults, I think the latter is absolutely selfish. I hate selfish people. One of my values is selflessness and this may be where a part of the difference lies, but I think it’s much more. As kids, we didn’t really have the ability to selfishly-rationalize. I don’t ever see a kid saying “I won’t lend you my eraser because you’re not giving me anything in return”. But in adulthood, we do. When a colleague(s) consistently asks you for help, how often do you think “are they taking advantage of me”, instead of “how fulfilling this will be for myself”? How often do we actually see people giving their X even if the return is less than? X>Y, where Y=<0?

The answer is rarely. Those that do, we see them as the unicorns. We say “I don’t know how this person does so much all the time, I can’t even manage my 40 hour work week.”

The next time you are giving an opportunity, always say yes. Think about how fulfilling it will be to you. Think about how little you would have responded. How fear, greed, or selfishness was never in the equation. Always be selfless.