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3 service scenarios: 1. You donate blood. 2. You make a dish for a funeral luncheon. 3. You help paint the local school playground. All three types of service are laudable. Each situation involves sacrificing a precious resource–time. Unfortunately, it is easy to feel disappointed, to believe that the resource we offered has been squandered. Has it?
Duncan, despite his current wall-drawing, house destroying, desire to be a clown rather than be obedient ways, is a sweet boy and a hard worker. He is so eager to make a contribution, to help in the family’s work. But it can be difficult to make significant useful contributions when you are only 5. The other day I found him helping his Daddy clean the basement. Somehow he ended up with the job of examining a box of old receipts. He was supposed to locate and remove any clips that might be holding the piles together. He did this by examining each receipt in the box one at a time for 45 minutes (Daddy got a lot done!). An adult could have accomplished the same result in under a minute. The receipt sorting was a make work project, but it sure made Duncan feel useful.
Is the adult who donates blood at a time of surplus (however slight) in a different situation? Donating blood is a good thing to do. Heaven knows we need people to donate blood. Blood supplies often run low. But consider: blood has a specific shelf life. Blood donation rates rise and fall. This means that sometimes there is a surplus. Yet how often do bloodbanks turn donors away? If you donate blood and it doesn’t find its way to a patient who requires a transfusion, did you squander your time as well as your blood? Was it pointless service or did it have a point?
My question is the same for the playground painting and the funeral luncheon dish. If you sign on to help paint the local playground, but 100 others show up as well, so you stand around talking and waiting for your turn to use the paint (the organizers prepared for 20) was your service pointless? If the funeral is not well attended, donated dishes may exceed eaters. Your pan may come back empty, but it wasn’t the bereaved who enjoyed your cake. Was your service pointless?
Why not? Why is this type of service not pointless? Can you explain it? Does your rationale apply to other things like voting as well?
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4 Responses to “Pointless Service: Does it have a Point?”
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It had never occurred to me that donated blood would sometimes be thrown away. I googled it, to see if I could find out how often that happens, but didn’t immediately find a satisfying answer. As a recipient of a transfusion a couple of years ago, I am mighty grateful people are willing to give. I would like to think blood is rarely wasted.
On the larger issue, I think we do lots of things that end up being a waste of time. Cleaning my kitchen floor, for example, which is nearly always followed by someone spilling their milk. While we wouldn’t intentionally waste time (I’m not talking about using time for leisure, or rest), we can’t always prevent it. Figuring out how to spend one’s time is what life is all about. We can be thoughtful and prayerful about it, and have the best of intentions, but then we have to let it go when things don’t go as planned.
Serving is good when it helps us be more selfless, regardless of the outcome. I’m pretty sure it would have been ok to go home on the playground painting project, though. 100 people and 20 paintbrushes is just silly. Oh, and when our ward does funeral luncheons, the extra food is often delivered to shut-ins or others who might appreciate it. I don’t think any cake is ever wasted.
do we do service to get gratification? Because that is what it is when our pan comes back empty or when we work hard at a project, right? I am not sure, just my thoughts. I think service is more for us and our progress than anything else. It is our growth. But I do know frusturation when you make all these arrangements to do service and it is not needed. Ugh! again a lesson for me I am sure.
Just for the heck of it, I’ll say that a lot of “service” can be quite pointless and that we should step back and ask what we can do with our precious time that will make the most impact. When I volunteer, I want to feel that my effort has made a real, concrete difference. If I come away with that feeling, I am more likely to stay engaged and do more. While I’ve done my share of pointless service, you kind of need some of that to start asking the bigger questions about impact and really moving the needle on issues of importance. Over many years of volunteering with nonprofits, I have honed a few special skills (building & managing databases, grant writing, writing newsletters, etc.) and now always offer to help with these types of projects versus helping with efforts that anyone off the street can do. [Pmom], you are a particularly sharp cookie – you probably have unique skills that would make your service truly impactful and best utilize your precious time. A good blog topic indeed!
I’m reminded of the famous story from then Elder Eyring about his dad weeding the patch of onions in a lot of pain an then laughing when he found out that he had been directed to the wrong set of weeds and the weeds he had weeded had already been sprayed and were dying.
http://speeches.byu.edu/reader/reader.php?id=7059