Service

Studies in happiness and life satisfaction demonstrate that acts of altruism or service to others play an important role not only in mood stability, but in one’s sense of the meaning of life. Those who help others have been shown to be less self-focused, less distrustful, more outgoing and less defensive.

Love of life means love of every aspect of creation, particularly our fellow human kind. By the time many realize they have been suffocating under the weight of earthly routine they feel at a loss as to how to change that. If life was spent fighting to be recognized and validated through the traditional definition of productivity and success, one at some point may realize that the weight of every day routine and striving for more does not satisfy. Looking out for number one is more typical of sadness and depression than of happiness and well-being.

Offering help to another, reading to a child, caring for an abandoned pet, joining in a spontaneous effort to aid a stranger who has experienced a loss, working in a soup kitchen, contributing to worthy causes, call us out of ourselves and into the realization that when my neighbor suffers I suffer.