Volunteering is like a holiday
I described my volunteering to some friends. One remarked how over the holidays she wanted to volunteer so went to some pages that catalogued volunteer opportunities but they were all filled.
People volunteering around holidays is like people going to gyms after new years resolutions: after the holiday, it empties again. People return to social media and watching TV over the gym and volunteering.
This time I looked at it differently. We love being generous and helping people. Somehow we do so during holidays more, but our hearts, minds, and souls benefit from helping others all the time, certainly more than from scrolling and getting outraged from social media.
Even though I volunteer fewer hours per week than many Americans spend on screens per day, I think I benefit from it a lot. Volunteering is like a holiday you create for yourself and your community any day you want.
You don’t need a formal holiday to benefit from volunteering. You don’t have to wait. You can put your phone on airplane mode and just go help people instead of scrolling, or even close your accounts. Then you have the holiday of helping people everyday. Actually, you stop hurting them too.
Here’s a picture from a volunteer run delivering food last Christmas that would have been thrown away otherwise.
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