Service is Joy
“What next?” These words escaped from Sandra Wilson on her drive back from the University of Wisconsin. Suddenly overcome by sadness and heaviness of heart, she parked on the side of the road to regain her composure.
Her last child, Nathan, was now off to college and although she had been preparing for this day for months, only now had it become a reality. Since her divorce a decade earlier, all she did revolved around the care of her three children. She loved them and was happy with their progress into adulthood, but she also felt an overwhelming sense of loss and abandonment, a loneliness that was eating her up. As she watched the cars zoom past, with tears dripping slowly down her face, she entertained the thought of joining her beloved mother in the afterlife. “What next? What do I have to look forward to?” It was not that long ago that she graduated from college with great hopes of a future with a loving family and a fulfilling career. All that was behind her now. How quickly the years go by, she mused.
Suddenly, her brooding was interrupted by the sight of an old, green Isuzu pickup truck that barely made it off the road and parked right in front of her car. Something was obviously wrong, so she wiped away her tears and got out of her car to go ask whether the stranded man needed help. His truck had run out of gas. She cheerfully offered to help the stranger. He was extremely grateful for her help in driving him to a gas station to buy gas and bringing him back to his vehicle. As she helped the stranger fill up his gas tank, so did he unknowingly fill up her joy tank.
Sandra’s service to the stranger erased her previous anxiety about living alone without her children. She had found the answer to her question “What’s next?” Every single human being is given the opportunity, each and every day, to find true joy through service. This simple realization was helpful to her because what she had feared with Nathan’s departure was the loss of joy. Now she knew that joy was abundantly available through genuine service.
Every charm of life passes, only love remains because it is the very essence of life. Where love is absent there is no life, just mere existence. Where love is present, however, there is also service and thus joy.
“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”
~Rabindranath Tagore