On community service as a vocation

My Mom threw a party tonight for my nephews and nieces (mostly, for those who live in Canada and the United States and are right now visiting in Mexico), and as per usual, I spent the last 3 days running around, helping set up her house, cleaning. Today was a gong-show. While I regularly host events at The Network Hub, and I grew up hosting my parents’ friends’ children, hosting a children’s party requires an entirely different skill set. One I’m glad I have polished again, as it may come handy at some point.

As I was having dinner with my Mom, I had a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes. I’m exhausted, and I cannot even go to sleep. I’ve worked so hard (juggling family life while doing my work, and trying to stay on top of my online community with Hummingbird604.com) that I think at some points I have lost sight of just how much I do for other people, and I do it selflessly. I don’t say this as self-congratulatory, but just as a matter of self-reflection. I use my blog to bounce ideas off of myself and as a record of everything I do, and something I look back on and examine my progress.

I told my Mom that I find it amazing that I wake up every morning, and instead of thinking of me and how to better myself, or further my career, the first thought that crosses my mind (and no, I’m not kidding you) is “which people do I need to help today and how?”. I check my social media email to see if I need to blog about a specific non-profit that asked me to spread the message about them. I check my university email to see if any of my students needs a letter of reference or a colleague needs feedback on a scholarly paper. I check my personal email and often find requests for help from either former students, or my family, or friends.

It hurt me deeply to be attacked online a couple of years ago when I co-organized Mental Health Camp Vancouver with Isabella Mori. It hurt me because somebody said that the reason why I volunteer so much and do so much community work is because I enjoy being popular. That my work can be so inaccurately misconstrued just blew me away. At the time, I was way more sensitive about it than I am today. Right now, I’m at the point where if people think I help others because I love the popularity, so be it.

Even in my scholarly work, the first thing I think about is “what can I do to help solve this world’s environmental problems?”. I spend countless hours thinking of ways to shape human interaction to enable them to collaborate to reduce pollution and strengthen environmental policy. And yes, of course I am human and sometimes all I want to do is break down in tears. I don’t appreciate being under-appreciated.

I once told a very close friend of mine that I can’t define myself without a volunteering/community service component to my life. My parents drilled into my brain and into my soul that I was an agent of change and that yes, I should be happy to be so talented, but that those talents had to be put to the service of society. And I keep thinking that, ALL THE TIME. What can I do to help Mexico? What can I do to help Canada? How can I be of service to society?

Being who I am (an academic with a double-life as a public figure with a quirky personality) requires a certain skin thickness. I face attacks quite often and my public persona is misconstrued in more ways than I care to count. But one thing is certain: I can’t ever stop being part of a community and being of service. It’s in my nature, in my blood and in my soul.