Times I Felt Alive
I believe that overall a major way that service can make us feel alive is when we can combine service with things that we are passionate about and things that we truly enjoy doing. For some of us the simple act of service is where we find passion and we feel alive doing any form of service we can find. Others may feel alive through service that involves personal connections with others or through social service, or through working on construction. I also personally believe that service make us feel alive when we can fully immerse ourselves in the service we are taking part in. I believe this often comes easier when service is paired with our passions as mentioned above, but that we can also find this through any service simply depending on its circumstances.
One of these categories of service if you will that has led to me feeling alive is construction work. I believe that I have always felt very invested in this kind of work because it interests me and it is very easy to see the changes I am making while doing this kind of work. This has also been the sort of service that I have had the most experience with over my years. One specific experience that made me feel alive was the international service trip I went on in Guatemala. Despite the negative aspects I think I have realized that came from this trip I still believe that it really allowed me to have a very beneficial experience where I learned a lot about myself and about the community I was serving despite the fact that I almost definitely benefited more from this trip then the people I was serving did. For the first week I was there I got to work on construction which I mentioned earlier was really something that interested me and I was able to feel really passionate about. One of the main reasons that I felt so interested and passionate about this project was that it was easy for us to see the progress we made throughout the week as the house we were building slowly rose up. The second reason which I believe was more important in this scenario is that we were able to engage the community in the completion of this project. Throughout the week as we arrived at the work site we were greeted by kids from the village with wide smiles on their faces and enthusiasm to help with what we had to accomplish that day. These kids helped with a variety of tasks such as moving materials and transporting buckets of cement. Having these kids around every day really helped us feel like we were part of the community which truly invigorated us as a team and I believe allowed us to work harder during the week. We also were able to bond with some of the kids which as I now know brings up some bad aspects involved with negative aspects of volunteerism and voluntourism it also allowed us to feel like we were making a larger impact in the community (an impact which I have later learned was more negative than I originally believed). I believe that in that moment I felt like I was really making a difference for the community of San Antonio, Guatemala which allowed me to feel alive in the situation. Even though I have sense come to the realization that this trip wasn’t the best planned and definitely had lots of room for improvement this specific project I completed on the trip really made me feel like I was accomplishing something and benefiting the community.
I believe that the one factor that has the greatest influence on whether or not I feel alive through service is how much I feel like my service is making a difference in the world. Through international service it was very easy for me to feel like the work I did had a great positive impact which for me really made me feel as if I had gone out and done this great thing, which made me feel alive.
