Service: The Fount of Life

The other week I posted a quote from Rich Roll’s Finding Ultra, the one that reminded us that life is about either evolution or devolution. In other words, there is no stasis, no permanency. This altogether Heraclitian idea—you know, Heraclitus, the panta rhei guy—is itself but a pole within the flux and permanency undulation endemic to human existence. Both are needed. We need stability and change; tradition and innovation; universal rules and local accommodations; formed characters and open minds. That’s how I would slightly qualify Roll’s otherwise spot-on observation.

But I am digressing. Today I wish to share his words on an altogether different theme—the call to outwardness. The mastery of life includes, at its core, the mastery of service, of giving yourself causes beyond your solipsistic preoccupations. Or as Rich Roll has it:

Do not covet your progress. Instead, give of yourself freely and selflessly. Because service is the magic bullet that fortifies our lives with meaning. It provides a transcendent sense of purpose. And most of all, it delivers that which we seek most—joy. They say when you give, you receive tenfold in return. 'For it is in giving that we receive' Francis of Assisi once said. But I prefer the poetic words of Kahlil Gibran. 'I slept and I dreamed that life is all joy. I woke and saw that life is all service. I served and I saw that service is joy.'

Ah, yes, Gibran, the poet of my youth! True words of wisdom all across the board.

While I did not intend to bring in another author here, I cannot but reference at least one thought from David Brook’s The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life:

Our society suffers from a crisis of connection, a crisis of solidarity. We live in a culture of hyper-individualism. There is always a tension between self and society, between the individual and the group. Over the past sixty years we have swung too far toward the self. The only way out is to rebalance, to build a culture that steers people toward relation, community, and commitment—the things we most deeply yearn for, yet undermine with our hyper-individualistic way of life. (xvii)

How apropos these words sound right now, at the beginning of 2021!