Give to receive: Volunteer

People volunteer for all kinds of reasons and to fulfill a wide array of needs out there. I believe that most, if not all of us, has an innate desire to be someone else’s hero. Be it an hour of tutoring your neighbor’s kid or spending a few days digging a well in a remote village in Cambodia, giving of ourselves does something to us deep within.

Although I have not been on any international volunteering projects but the few times I was involved in community work is enough to make me realize the reality of social and economical deprivation around us. My hands may be small but at a little help is better than no help at all. Here’s a story which you may have read but I thought thre’s no harm in sharing it here:

Once a man was walking along a beach. The sun was shining and it was a beautiful day. Off in the distance he could see a person going back and forth between the surf's edge and and the beach. Back and forth this person went. As the man approached he could see that there were hundreds of starfish stranded on the sand as the result of the natural action of the tide.

The man was stuck by the the apparent futility of the task. There were far too many starfish. Many of them were sure to perish. As he approached the person continued the task of picking up starfish one by one and throwing them into the surf.
As he came up to the person he said, "You must be crazy. There are thousands of miles of beach covered with starfish. You can't possibly make a difference." The person looked at the man. He then stooped down and pick up one more starfish and threw it back into the ocean. He turned back to the man and said, "It sure made a difference to that one!"