Finding oneself in service

I have had a VERY long week. I feel like I am drowning in homework, grading, and even my relationships are suffering. I have had very few moments of happiness, although I did get to go out last night with a great girl......oh but I got pulled over by the police twice while we were driving. Anyway, this all led me to the quiet of my brother's house in Idaho Falls, where I know I could write my papers due for Econ History of Thought. Besides his constant complaining about me not playing video games, he was a great help in researching and bouncing ideas. However, I don't blog to talk about the mundane details of my life, lol, rather I blog to talk about the mundane thoughts of my life while I am living those mundane details.

My brother and I are very different people. He has a great aspiration for personal wealth and for the glory of the world. He believes money brings respect and would give him a manner whereby he could enrich the lives of his family. Whenever he views my life he sees a different path than the one I see, or want. Clay always comments on my becoming wealthy, and exploiting any gift to the fullest of its monetary equivalent. Quoting Clay, "I can't wait till your rich and powerful Gage." I don't share his optimism in regards to my talents, but equally important I don't share his dream. I feel the living of life for monetary gain is rather paltry and a low form of existence. I don't live to prostitute out those talents with which I was blessed, rather I live to enrich the lives of those around me.

Finding yourself in service is the key I have found to any happiness I have ever experienced. Humanity needs are like a gaping black hole than seemingly cannot be filled. It didn't matter how many times I won a speech competition, at a state level or even national level, I was only compelled to achieve more, not for the sake of my love of speech, but rather in the need to fill the hole of my existence. My grades are never enough, and so I push to find reason to my existence in my education. I believe every action we take ultimately leads us to seeking to prove a need for our being on this earth. We seek to constantly prove to the world that we are important, and so we often find what we are best at and do it continually for our own gain and acclamation. The beauty queen constantly draws attention to her physical beauty, the intellectual to his gifts of reasoning, the athlete to his feats of prowess. We even seek to attract the opposite sex this way. I feel we have it all wrong. Because no matter how much we attempt to fil the gap of WHY, the reason for our existence in the lauding of self acclamation, all we do is throw another glory into the midst of our personal black holes. I have only found one concept, one act, that suffices and momentarily satisfies my blackhole, and that is service to my fellow man. This service has a myriad of forms, the one most often experienced is love and the service associated to another when we love them. We feel this in our families, when we find someone we are not only attracted to but care about, when we find a passion in work that we do not for glory but because it enamores us, and we wish to share it with the world. The act of sharing momentarily kills the beast inside us, and in those moments we find peace and happiness. Truly we find a reason to exist when we serve others. It goes to prove the idea that we serve ourselves best when we serve others.

I think that is what I most want in my life. I have found the greatest moments of happiness in my life when I have been teaching others, when I have been loving them and serving them, or when I have been able to give back to their achievements. When others welfare because our first desire, then is society not only served, but our individual goals are achieved as well. As the entirety of society serves each other, I may not be able to fulfill my goals but others help me reach to them even as I help the reach their own. There is a reason to exist, in the aiding of society to a new level. I think this is what draws me to public service. I don't seek to be a Senator for attention, in fact anyone that knows me understands how I so often HATE being in the center of attention, but I do love to serve. I feel this fulfilling of the reason of your existence should be a goal of everyone. We all need to find what we are best at, what we love to do, and find who we love to do it with, and form a friendships with others who have similiar desires and then just simply do what we love. As we do what we love and are good at that BENEFITS society, we enrich our lives and the lives of the world. I think of the likes of Gandhi, Friedrich Hayek, Mother Theresa, and so many others that at times lived a life not appreciated, who pushed forward ideas no one thought was popular, so that they might aide society later. Gandhi built a nation, Hayek revived capitalism, and Mother Theresa gave the love of Christ to thousands, and not one of them died in opulent luxury. Yet they had a reason to exist, and they lived that reason.

I want to find my reason for existence, found how best to serve. I wish Clay could understand that I would be far richer serving others than I can ever be simply exploiting them or myself. My gifts, anyone's gifts, are not their own to be wasted on the gaining of wealth, but they are to be used.

I love humanity, its flaws and all, and there is nothing I want more than to give back to it the joys it has shown me. I too must fill the blackhole of WHY in my life, and I pray as I find the best way to do so that I will forever enrich the lives of those around me with more than my simple platitudes.