After reading through this month’s magazines, I came across multiple articles, which happened to have a common theme even though they spanned everything from technology, religion, to finances. Perhaps the past year has generated a greater desire within us all? This idea, which more people have been able to support, has created a platform for more growth and opportunity: service to others.
Service hasn’t been a new idea in our lives. It’s been around ever since we first started creating communities to share and care for one another. But amass the scandals, social media and our other attachments in life, “service” isn’t always top of mind.
More recently, I’ve had more questions about why I became a yoga teacher. If you know my history, I’ve always been involved with community groups and founded companies around social enterprise. With my departure from that realm quite recently, my passion and focus has been towards my students and the kula we’re creating around us. My desire is to guide and help my students sustainably grow themselves, by introducing new tools into their lives that they can apply with agency. “Teach someone to fish…”
It’s nice to know, though, that outside of the yoga world, people from different experiences of life are continuing to make service their platform too. For example, multiple articles focused on building more environmentally sustainable technologies for the long term health of our world and people. This stems not only from clean energy technologies, but also education and access to said knowledge. With additional momentum, this may become much more of a reality sooner than you think. People’s attachment to short term monetary goals, though, has hindered its progress in the near term.
Even looking at religious organizations, whose platforms have typically always been that of service have been mired by scandals too: financial, sexual, & political. Alas the “Pope of the People” has been able to redirect the Catholic Church’s interests back towards helping the people; helping the poor. Their decisions to reallocate more of their raised funds towards helping the community versus building lavish monuments has given me hope that even dogmatic entities can pull away from protecting personal interests, and instead lead by example.
Capitalist markets full of entrepreneurs are finding new, innovative ways to fulfill basic needs more efficiently. Think Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. You would think that competition and a focus on “making it” would take on a more negative disposition towards cutthroat markets and deal making, but the difference here is that the passion driving these leaders is not of greed or power. Albeit some leaders (dictators) have previously thought their own campaigns were in the best interest of the community at large. These modern leaders are more mindful and aware of how to apply their ideas to the masses, with many more checks and balances from more objective onlookers. There’s even collaboration and “group-think” between competing companies. If you come from the IT world, it’s kind of like opensource, but for social equanimity.
So I’m happy to know that there are people in the community who are like minded with a genuine desire to help others. The scale can be small and focused to things at large. Don’t take the bystander’s dilemma and assume that other people are going to help the world around you. Challenge yourself to find at least one way to give service to another/others on a daily basis. If we all can do this unconditionally, we’ll find much more equanimity and peace in our own hearts.
~Namaste~ BC