I never thought I’d do my best thinking while shoveling mulch on a Saturday afternoon.
Actually, I never really thought I’d be shoveling mulch on a Saturday afternoon to begin with.
But, when my friend Sky called me at 11 a.m. to say,
“Hey, I signed us up to go to a service project. Can you be ready in 15 minutes? Yeah, yeah, I know. I have a pounding headache, too. Let’s just suck it up and go.”
I popped a couple Advil and threw on my Nikes.
We were supposed to meet at the TriDelta sorority house to get our project assignment and my spirits were immediately lifted upon seeing boxes and boxes of free pizza. They handed us a packet of guidelines and as I power-ate four slices (in retrospect, that was an excessive amount) and filled out a safety waiver, I glanced the words “power tools” and “No staple fights” and knew I was in for an interesting day.
Who would trust me with a staple gun?
I’ll fast forward through the drive to the project site that consisted of me complaining about having a stomach ache from eating too much pizza and Sky recapping the debauchery from the night before.
The organization we were helping for the day was Rebuilding Together North Central Florida (RTNCF), which is “a home repair organization dedicated to addressing the substandard housing needs in North Central Florida.” According to their website, RTNCF “strive to increase safety, security, and well-being for residents in need by providing a tangible place for the community members to get involved in rebuilding efforts.”
To put it simply, they fix emergency problems in the homes of people that cannot afford the repairs and cannot afford to sell their homes. For example, living with a giant leaking hole in your roof is a hazard that needs to be addressed for your safety and well-being.
I, personally, have zero roofing experience, and zero expertise in the home repair department in general, so when the woman in the office asked for two volunteers to shovel mulch, Sky and I quickly raised our hands.
We hopped in the mulch-filled pick up truck with the project coordinator, Brittany, a cool-looking girl rocking skinnies and a septum piercing who looked not much older than us.
The topics of conversation that blossomed between the three of us quickly progressed from the surface level “So…what’s your major?” to deeper questions about figuring out who we are and what we are supposed to do in the world.
Hey, if you’re going to spend a few hours ankle deep in dirt, you might as well get to know each other.
Via: thecollegehelper.com
Brittany Le, who just graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in Anthropology, is working with AmeriCorps, an organization that offers opportunities for people to serve communities through a network of partnerships with local and national nonprofit groups (Think Peace Corps, but for only a year and only in the United States).
As someone who has always been drawn to nonprofit work, I had to ask: why did she choose to get involved?
“I didn’t know what to do next, I was in school for a long time and wanted to do something different,” said Le. “I have this fear that things won’t work out, but it’s time to take risks and see what happens. And if it doesn’t work out then at least it’s another learning experience.”
This struck a cord with me.
I feel like it strikes a cord with everyone our age.
There is tremendous pressure to have a concrete life plan and once you pick what you’re going to do, all of a sudden you’re hurtling towards this future and you aren’t even sure it’s what you want. There are tons of things you want to do and places you want to go and things you want to experience, but when is the time right? Will you suddenly wake up 20 years from now and wish you’d done things differently? It can be paralyzing to think about.
I’ve always struggled with the notion of when the “right” time to travel the world and take risks and just go with flow of life is.
There’s the argument that if you can just push through all the school and then get the job and make the money, then you’ll have the freedom to do whatever you want. You’ll get to travel comfortably, sleeping in decent lodging, eat nice food and “fully” experience what each place has to offer. You’ll have money to donate to causes and charities that you feel compelled to help. You can take risks while having a stable life established to catch you if something goes wrong.
The other side says now is the time to take chances and live your life. You’re young and don’t care if you sleep on the floor of a hostel (plus your body can handle it better physically). You’ll eat cheap food from vendors on the streets of Prague and drink cheap beer at pubs in London and enjoy every second of it. You’ll make friends with the random people you’ll meet and go with natives to weird local venues and see the city through their eyes. Isn’t that “fully” experiencing a place way more than getting room service at a hotel and hearing a monotone guy regurgitate history facts on a guided tour? And since you don’t have money to donate, you donate your time. You get your hands dirty helping people and shoveling mulch and instead of reading a charity’s mission statement and stroking a check, you are seeing their work in action and meeting the people who are being impacted.
As we stood on the diminishing pile of mulch in the truck bed, we discussed how the views of our parents shape how we feel about our futures. We talked about how hard it can be to balance personal desires with family obligations.
“I’ve always been very academically oriented. But I realized those aren’t the memories you cherish. I feel like I could have been doing more,” said Le. “What is a more gratifying way to spend your time: an hour spent listening to someone read aloud from a text book or an hour spent assisting someone who really needed it?”
Do you feel like you could be doing more? I don’t believe your answer to that question means the right choice is to drop out of school and live obscurely as a nomad somewhere or give up on scholarly pursuits to be a Mother Theresa, but I do believe it should change the way you live your life here. Make sure that instead of just sitting in the classroom dreaming about what the world can offer, go to class and then fill a couple hours of your week doing things that fulfill the urge. Don’t be jaded, don’t be scared, don’t be freaked out that things might not work out.
Sign up for a trip with people you don’t know, experience nature in a new way, show up to the fencing club meeting and give it a try and randomly volunteer for service projects and actually show up (even if you’re hung over). Those experiences, regardless of whether they are a one time thing or lead to huge life epiphanies, will build up to make you a much more interesting person than if you just stick to going to school and going to the bars.
When it comes down to it, nobody really knows when the right time is or how your risks are supposed to be taken. (That’s what makes them risks, right?) You just get to make daily choices as to how you want to live and how you are going to spend your time.
I chose to shovel mulch on a Saturday afternoon and gained a new friend, a sense of satisfaction from helping out in our community and a fresh perspective on the unfolding of life. What did you gain this Saturday?
