Committment
February 2, 2007
The other night at Youthline we were talking about committment. Not necessarily to a person, but just the concept in general. Youthline as an organisation has trouble with getting people to commit, mostly because our work is voluntary. It invests huge amounts of money into training us up as counsellors and in return we are expected to commit a minimum of 2 years working. Fair enough if you ask me. Well, no one did and it would appear that if they had’ve they may not have liked the answer.
One of my pet hates has always been people that don’t keep promises and can’t stick to committments. If you say you’re gonna do something, then it is your responsibility to do it. Unless of course you have a legitimate reason for not doing so. And ‘I can’t be bothered’ or ‘I’m really tired’ aren’t legitimate excuses.
On a not necessarily obviously related subject, I have been part of the no-human-is-capable-of-a-completely-selfless-act debate a few times recently. I find this fascinating and it has led to me giving a lot of thought to why it is that I do Youthline. It is about the most selfless act that I can imagine on a personal level, other than dying for someone.
There is no question that you achieve a huge amount of personal growth by doing the training sessions, but you can do those without actually doing the counselling training. You get a degree of personal satisifaction when people find out that you work as a volunteer counsellor. The ‘Wow, you must be a really amazing person to do that’ kind of bullshit. It’s nice to be appreciated, but I don’t really get off on that. I guess part of the reason that I do it is because I believe that everyone has a role to play in the universe. I don’t necessarily mean that in any kind of karmic or spiritual way – I just mean that you can’t expect to spend your life taking without doing any giving. You gotta sow before you reap etc.
I am blessed in this life. I’ve said it a billion times. I have never needed to use Youthline (or similar). That is certainly not because I haven’t done dumb things, or made major screw ups. It’s partly because I have a great support network and partly because (and I know you’lll find this hard to believe) I don’t have a problem talking things through. But that’s not to say that I won’t need one in the future. And if that day comes, I hope there is someone that feels the way I do about giving some time to help out.
So… if you say you’re going to do something do it. If you make a promise or a committment, be bound by it. And even more than that… get out there and make some promises and committments.
You just never know when you’ll need credit in the bank of life.
“On a not necessarily obviously related subject, I have been part of the no-human-is-capable-of-a-completely-selfless-act debate a few times recently. ”
I think there are very few humans that are capable of completely selfless acts. That guy in New York City who threw himself on top of someone who had fell on the subway tracks and was about to be crushed by a train comes to mind.
http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/01/04/subway.rescue.ap/index.html
I think something like that is about as selfless as it gets. But there still is a lot of kindness
that is done in the world that is motivated at least partly by some selfishness. And that selfishness may only be just the desire to reap the spiritual/emotional/mental rewards of helping someone, because it makes you feel like a better person or maybe you feel you’re trying to redeem yourself for past wrong deeds, or maybe you believe you’ll be rewarded in the afterlife for your good deeds, or maybe you just believe that what goes around comes around so you want to stay in good standing. That is somewhat selfish, but it is certainly NOT a bad type of selfishness. Selfishness has a bad connotation but it isn’t necessarily a bad thing. If we weren’t all genetically programmed to be inherently selfish we probably wouldn’t have survived as a species. It’s a rough planet and everything seems to want to eat(using the term “eat” loosely) something else. You have to think about your self to some degree.
So I actually think most kindness in the world is actually at least somewhat motivated by selfishness, but the good kind of selfishness.
Either way, I think what you’re doing is awesome, whether or not you’re just trying to make up for the guy you made have a heart attack.
Wow Idiot. You said something of worth! Wonders never cease.