Service

“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.” 
― Rabindranath Tagore

I have been so blessed with opportunity lately. So many people have put forth effort to enable me to be successful. I have really been working hard on myself, for the last couple months. By necessity, this has been a really selfish time in my life. I realize that this is ok. I can't be there for anyone else, if I can't be there for myself, first.

I have really felt the desire to get outside of myself, as of late. I was cruising around on this volunteer website, http://www.volunteermatch.org/search/index.jsp?r=msa&l=99354,+, trying to find something that interested me, when I found an advertisement for Art at the Arch. They were asking for volunteers to help teach kids with developmental disabilities to paint. I have been volunteering on this project for two weeks now. It's only one day a week, for two and a half hours per session.

I have been helping a five year old Autistic boy, named Markus, learn to paint. To tell you the truth, he has been teaching me a lot more than I have been teaching him. This project has been a lot of fun, for both of us. Markus is aways chomping at the bit. He's not one for listening to instructions (something I can identify with), he just wants to paint/draw. What ever we are doing, he is into it, 100%.

At first, he had some doubts. "What do you want to paint?", I asked him.  "I don't know how to paint", he responded".  "That's ok", I told him. "We are going to learn".  We started out by drawing some sketches. When I asked him what he wanted to draw, he replied "A dinosaur", without hesitation. "But, I don't know how to draw a dinosaur", he told me. Once again, I responded "That's ok, we are going to learn". We found a picture of a dinosaur he liked and I started to sketch it out myself. I told him to just do what I was doing. "First we draw the body, then the head, then the tail, then maybe some spikes" a very rudimentary sketch. Markus started to sketch his own dinosaur and quickly forgot all about what I was doing. He definitely had a vision of what he wanted, immediately. He didn't want to listen to any advice. He was doing it his way and that was awesome! I just let him go to town and asked him to explain to me what he was doing. He told me a story about the dinosaur, while he was drawing it. One dinosaur quickly turned into a family of dinosaurs. The next step was turning the drawing into a painting, I told him.

After some initial hesitation, he once again dove head first into the creative process. Once again, he didn't want any help, or instructions. He knew what he wanted and he was full-on committed to the process. It was awesome to see how quickly he changed from the self doubt we all experience, into the master of his own domain. We pretty much had to drag him away from the painting, when it was time to clean up. When we finally got the painting put away, Markus totally got into helping me clean up. He not only wanted to clean his table, he wanted to clean the whole room! He kept finding places that needed cleaning and would point them out to me. "Right here", he would say. I would spray it and he would wipe it up. Then, on to the next spot. I've never seen a kid have so much fun cleaning!

I didn't feel like I was really giving my time away. I felt like I was being blessed with a great experience. I would highly recommend getting involved in some sort of volunteer work. Not only will you be doing some good for society and helping others, you will soon discover that the joy and reward you receive is like no other. I begin to understand what Gandhi meant, when he said "The best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in the service of others."