Being the Change You Wish to See in the World

When I arrived at the University of Texas last fall, I wanted to enjoy my free time as much as possible, for I seldom had any time to myself during high school. I wasn’t going to be bothered by requirements of any kind: attendance, dress code, athletics, or community service. At Fort Worth Country Day School, all of these were forced upon us. The enforcement of these school policies somehow could take the fun out of sports and the sincerity out of community service. We felt inclined to volunteer for Habitat for Humanity because we wanted to graduate. No forty hours of service, no diploma. So regardless of whether or not our service came from the heart, we had to complete the quota. The fun I used to have going to night shelters or food banks with my youth group disappeared from my high school scene. Forced service: what is this, anyway? The phrase itself is a contradiction. So I carried this mentality with me to the University of Texas, the mindset that I wasn’t going to be restricted by requirements. I wouldn’t have to do anything I did not want to do.

Once I began pledgeship for my fraternity, I learned how wrong my thought process was. I had even more requirements than ever before. I couldn’t have facial hair, I couldn’t have hair that went beyond the ears, I had to wear khakis and a collared shirt to every class and sit in the first several rows. Furthermore, I was required to participate in community service. I thought to myself, ‘not this again.’ I wandered down to 22nd street on the Drag on my first Thursday afternoon of pledgeship. I walked down the alley behind the Baptist Church and came through the back entrance there. Little did I know that I was beginning a tradition that I have taken part in on a weekly basis since that day. Though pledgeship is over, I continue to volunteer at the Baptist Church’s soup kitchen each day at 4:30 in the afternoon. It’s the same four or five guys every time. We pour drinks, we serve the food, and we do the dishes and wipe the tables clean. But my favorite part is interacting with the people there. To facilitate the process, the people running the soup kitchen always let the handicapped people into the fellowship hall first. Every week, the same man in a motorized scooter would have me fill his 7-11 mug with iced tea. His left arm is paralyzed from a stroke he suffered several years ago, so he cannot do it himself. The first few times he had to ask me, but I soon got the hang of the process and would approach him first, offering to get him his usual iced tea. Over the course of the first semester, I talked to him extensively and learned a lot about his life, his faith, etc. He has hurt so much in his life, but he has a good attitude at all times. Dass argues that when we have such interaction with someone who truly has reason to be depressed, we instinctively share some comfort and feel more at ease with the situation and ourselves. Dass writes, “Caring for one another, we sometimes glimpse an essential quality of our being,” and that “we’re reminded of who we really are and what we have to offer one another” (7). I would not think that simple conversation and frequent iced tea refills would mean much to this man, but now I realize how priceless my interaction with him was.

Working at the soup kitchen over the past seven months has changed by attitude toward service back to a positive one. I no longer think of helping others as a requirement, or in terms of quotas. I think of it as doing my part of change. Gandhi wrote, “You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” Along these same lines, the Thai monk in one of Dass’s anecdotes was this change as well; the story states “And I saw that his commitment was so total, that he wasn’t just someone using a skill. He had died into his work. He was the cure” (96). Death as a means of curing and redemption reminds me of Christ’s death. The story does not revolve around the torture and the agony, but instead serves as a means to “open our hearts by calling forth our compassion, our capacity to suffer with another” (Bump 133). The five of us might have initially looked a little out of place that first week, wearing Polo and Northface products, but we soon found out nitch there. Now the directors of the kitchen know our names and majors, and the people there know what we hope to become and do with our lives. But since we interacted with them, shared words of comfort with them, or wrote on the prayer wall with them, we were able to share their experiences and suffer with them. Since we enjoyed the work we were doing, we entered ourselves into it and became that work. Through our work, we entered into the suffering of others and experienced that with them as well. As Dass states, “in service we find unity” (6). What do a bunch of fraternity boys have to offer a hall full of homeless people? More than you might expect.