Why do we volunteer?
It’s good to see that those in which the spirit of charity and helping has “lain dormant for these last eight years” (Keep the poor in your hearts Michael Tucker-Friday 11/21/08) may finally have someone to inspire them! It will be great to have new folks join those who have already been so inclined for many years now. If a leader can do that, there is hope for us after all. The value of a volunteer is unsurpassed!
I hope, however, that this impetus to volunteering and self sacrifice remains a product of inspiration and personal responsibility. Heaven help the country that institutes service via mandate, regulation or obligation. If volunteerism and sacrifice take on that quality we will lose a foundational facet of our free society. If that happens, our country will be in danger of losing its heart.
Let us watch closely to be sure our volunteering doesn’t follow the path most valued in a previous writers letter, (Changing U.S. Policies, Rosalie Paul, 11/14/08.) Her belief states that most volunteerism should come not necessarily in the form of feeding the hungry in our midst or trash picking from the sides of the roads but more importantly in the form of promoting and demanding policy change. To wish that all or most volunteerism should revert from caring for the basic needs to changing policies is to create a mob of debaters while the hungry are left looking for someone else to help them.
(To be printed in the Wednesday, 12/10/08 Opinion page of The Times Record newspaper.)