Try not to become a man of success,
but rather try to become a man of value.
— Albert Einstein
The first cousin of the Law of Life Mission is the Law of Purpose Through Service.
Mission comes alive only through service — the idea of caring for others. There’s magic in this law. When we serve with depth and sincerity, we get a glimpse of the essential quality of who we really can become.
We may be sitting alone, lost in self-doubt or mired in self-pity, our troubles seeming to overwhelm us. The phone rings. It’s a friend who’s really in need. Without conscious thought, we break out of our self-imposed shell of isolation.
We listen. We give words of assurance. We serve. When we put the phone down, who feels better? The friend does, we hope. But we do, too! And when we reflect on what took place, we understand more clearly who we really are and what we have to offer others. We know a new level of wellness.
What’s at work here is the Law of Purpose Through Service.
The best way we can fulfill — in fact, the only way of fulfilling — our highest wellness potential is through service to others. Success in life is measured not by longevity or wealth or honors or power. Those people on the wellness journey measure success by service, by the degree to which we’ve helped others. Benjamin Franklin, America’s Renaissance man, lived and breathed the Law of Purpose Through Service. He once said he owed his happiness to the philosophy he had formulated half a century earlier, which he summarized: “The most acceptable service to God is doing good to man.” History is filled with examples of people, even heads of state, who counted themselves failures although they had shown great skill at accumulating riches and power.
No matter what our vocation, whether we are the president of the United States or a mucker of horse stalls, unless we can approach our duty with a deep sense of purpose, we will never find satisfaction. Fulfillment will forever elude us. Even when we are cleaning a horse stall, the attitude of serving others, of caring for God’s creation, can shine through. Then we know contentment.
How can I serve? is a profound question in everyone’s wellness equation. The assumptions behind it are critically important for the serious wellness student. We must think through, personalize, and understand both intellectually and emotionally this idea of finding purpose through helping others.
The truth is, we are here to serve. Marianne Williamson, in her book A Return to Love, wrote about her search through many spiritual and philosophical writings: “It felt as though they led me up a huge flight of stairs to a giant cathedral inside my mind. But once I reached the top of the stairs, the door to the church was locked.” Then she found the key that opened the door. “The key, very simply, is other people.”
That’s it! It’s the Law of Purpose Through Service. We find our purpose with others.
How can I serve? What can I contribute? Where can I give? How can I demonstrate I care? Who needs my love? What life journeys have I successfully navigated, and how can I share my experience and insights with others? In the answers to these questions lies purpose that is directly tied to serving others.
This law asks that we examine our motivation for service. It does not demand that we serve. There can be little esprit, the all-important first law of wellness, when we are mandated to action. Instead, we become sincerely motivated to action.
The Law of Purpose Through Service asks that we make a habit of helping others, so that helping becomes for us a natural way of expressing compassion. The law challenges us to live out life’s greatest equation: in Emerson’s words, “You cannot sincerely help another without helping yourself.”
Understand that the Law of Purpose Through Service is a two-way street. We fulfill our purpose through serving the next person. The reward? We enhance and enrich our own life through that service. Note the order: first we serve; then we are enriched. It’s a wonderful covenant.
The law’s promise compels us to choose to let our compassion for others come forth in a spontaneous manner because it is our deepest and best nature to do so. Able to serve and help in ways we never before imagined, we discover an inner joy and contentment in everything we do.
Our family had friends who were living very near the epicenter of California’s 1994 Northridge earthquake. Their beautiful home collapsed. The great wood beams that once supported the cathedral ceiling of the warm and inviting living room now lay smashed in front of the fireplace. The home’s foundation revealed cracks large enough to stick your fist through. The bedroom wing of the house was starting to inch its way downhill.
Our friends were terrified. The realization that they had lost most of their material possessions left them devastated. Tears flowed. They could focus only on their loss.
They were unable to work that first week following the quake. They would get up early, leave their hotel room, and sort through the pile of rubble that was once their home. Neighbors would come, some to help, some to share their misery. My friend, an attorney, found himself counseling them and giving guidance, an activity that gave him great satisfaction. “Where do I file a claim?” “How do I get a disaster-relief loan?” “What can I do about my insurance company?” Working at a card table set up on his street, he started to help others.
“I have never felt more satisfaction in my entire life,” he told me recently. “I want to do more of this, to help where I’m needed. We’re probably not going to rebuild the big home. It took too much of our time to maintain, time better used in service to those who can really use a hand.”
When we serve, our idea of the nature of helping expands. We grow, and are of even greater service as a result. And we know inner peace and joy.
This is the real benefit and reward of consciously practicing the Law of Purpose Through Service: an opportunity to help relieve suffering in another while growing in character ourselves.
But there are clearly many ways in which we hesitate to serve. Or we get confused when we try. I used to serve in the middle of downtown Los Angeles. Every day a different stranger would ask, “Can you spare a quarter?” And every day I would witness certain biases surfacing within me. I would hesitate. I would think of reasons not to help.
I first held back because I felt the works of compassion had become somewhat formalized. I put money in the collection plate. I gave at the office. Those funds had been, or should have been, put to use for this person already. If not, I would rationalize, they’re waiting for him, in one form or another, at the local rescue mission. And that day no quarter would make its way from my pocket to meet his need.
I’d get angry at God. Looking at the squalor these people lived in, I’d cry out, “God, can’t you see? Don’t you care? Won’t you do something about it?” Then the answer came. “Yes, I do see. Yes, I do care. And yes, I am doing something about it because I have just brought their problem to your attention.”
One time, it seemed certain that the fellow asking for money was an alcoholic. “If you give him money, you’re crazy,” my friends would say. “You’re only feeding his habit, digging his grave deeper, adding to the woes he already has.”
One day I brought two sandwiches from home, beautifully prepared: tuna salad and lettuce on whole-wheat bread. I thought I’d give them to the fellow instead of money. He looked at the bag of sandwiches, gave them to the man standing next to him, and shouted to the next person coming down the sidewalk, “Hey, buddy, can you spare a quarter?”
My instinctive reaction was to feel that I had been treated unfairly. “Hey, where’s your gratitude?” I wanted to shout. But as a friend later reminded me, purpose is found through service, and service must be offered totally, without conditions of acceptance.
An important lesson. No conditions. The Law of Purpose Through Service has its simple side and its complex side. The laws of wellness are not always easy.
The choice of how to serve forced me to examine my motives and consider my own needs. I had expected appreciation, some sort of positive reinforcement. When I uncovered the hidden conditions that I had attached to helping another person, I was truly surprised. I had been operating out of pride, out of a need for recognition; my ego needed strokes. I grew through that experience.
The Law of Purpose Through Service makes us face the essential question of personal motives. With a minimal amount of introspection and a reasonable amount of perspective, we can come to see many of our ego-driven motives as signals calling for our own personal growth. Once I was able to reduce my ego’s influence, I was free to serve without regard to undue praise. My reward was in the act of serving itself, not in the psychological payback.
There are thousands of ways to serve. Visit a friend who’s sick. Give someone a bouquet of flowers. Volunteer at your local Red Cross, Salvation Army, or Habitat for Humanity.
Telephone someone and give that person a lift. Send a card with a note of encouragement. Fix a snack and take it to a senior center. Paint a picture and give it away. Help at your church or synagogue. Invite friends over for a meal. Speak up at your local city council when you see an injustice. Volunteer at a hospital.
Write a personal history and make copies for all your family members. Plan a trip for your club to tour your state capitol building. Plant a tree or a rosebush. Help clean up an elderly neighbor’s yard. Volunteer at a soup kitchen or homeless shelter. Be a secret pal to a friend for a week and drop off goodies or send a card and then identify yourself at the end of the week.
I smile when I consider all the possibilities.
The Law of Purpose Through Service. It’s a wonderful and powerful law. We help another. We help ourselves. We find meaning. Our satisfaction soars. To top it off, we can even have a good time while we’re doing it.
When we think of living the truly fulfilling life, let’s think often of the non-negotiable Law of Purpose Through Service.