Week 52 - The Final Week - Lakeview Pantry

Well, here we are.  Fifty-two weeks later, and we have met our commitment.  One whole year of doing something to help others every week.  On the one hand, it feels good to have come this far down a  path of compassion and on the other hand, it just feels normal, like it is just what we do now.  We could easily pledge another year of the same and it would not be hard.  We have brought giving into our lives and have made it a part of ourselves, so choosing to do it is easy.  That is one of the things we have learned along the way.  I want to talk about those things, but first I need to quickly summarize our experiences this week.

Our planned volunteering this week was at the Lakeview Pantry, one of our new homes in the volunteering world.  We worked again with our friend Maloo and, as always, there were some things to talk about.  It was a snowy day, and the first distribution after Christmas, so the volume of patrons was really light.  The lines moved fast and most people were in a pretty good mood.  Maloo worked the meat counter again, since she enjoyed it so much last time.  Jen learned how to do patron intake, which was new for her.  This is where the Pantry keeps track of its customers and makes sure that everyone is following the rules about how often food can be received.  Jen enjoyed this work a lot because she had to stay on her toes mentally and because she got to talk to every patron a little bit.  I worked the bread counter, which I have not done since my first week at the Pantry.  It was fun because I could be pretty generous owing to the light volume.  When you work the bread counter, the line backs up right in front of you.  This is because it takes a long time to give out produce, the next stop in the distribution line.  Because the line was backed up, I got to chat with a lot of the patrons, and got to know a little about them.  I met a woman with seven kids who had the oldest few with her.  Her son, clearly the oldest and probably in high school, made a real impression on me.  He was friendly and polite and obviously interested in helping out his family.  I wanted to give the kid a hug, a medal and a college scholarship.  Of course, I could do none of those things, but I did give him a few extra energy bars for after wrestling practice at school.  I also met a woman who was a school teacher for 20 years and was kicked to the curb by Chicago Public Schools.  She almost lost her house, but managed to hang on to it, although she needs help with food as a result.  She was witty and erudite, and a pleasure to talk to - cheerful in spite of her troubles.

One other fellow was a little less pleasant.  He was a young man, probably in his twenties, who came in with a beer.  He was quiet and kind of fierce looking, but we take everyone.  He became agitated a little while into the distribution, complaining about people bumping into him.  He started arguing with one of the female patrons as they waited in line in front of my station.  As I started to pay attention to what was happening, he started to argue with me.  It was clear that his reactions were disproportionate to the situation, that he was not completely in control of himself.  He did not do anything that could be construed as violent or even approaching violence, but he did start to get loud.  As I was preparing to come around the counter to move him away from the other patrons, Carrie, the Pantry director and a male patron in line both stepped in.  They calmly asked to talk to young man outside, and he went along without incident.  Carrie is fantastic in these situations.  She knows how to help the patrons be on their best behavior, and she makes it clear that she cares about them, even when she has to deny them service, as she had to in this case.  When the male patron came back to the line, I thanked him and gave him some extra food as well.  He and others in line with made many comments about how grateful they are that the Pantry exists and that we come to work there.  They are not fond of anyone who disrespects that.

The rest of the night went quickly and quietly, and we cleaned up and got done a little early.  It was, as it always is, a great night at the Pantry.

So now, let's take a look back and try to put things in perspective.  Jen and I volunteered on 42 different occasions and we made 20 (-ish)  small donations to various causes.  We brought seven people along with us at various times throughout the year, some of them more than once.  All of them had never worked at the place we took them.  All told, we did about 230 hours of service and donated around $500.  We volunteered primarily with seven organizations, and donated to about 18 more.  As to the number of people we met and helped, that number is beyond count.  It is certainly over 1000 people, and possibly over ten thousand.

As with this entire blogging endeavor, I do not bring up these numbers to trumpet our accomplishments.  I bring them up because it helps to show the impact that a single person can make when he or she is dedicated to a simple mission.  On average, our volunteer work was two or two and a half hours.  The longest sessions were only four.  Those few hours every week generated the kind of result listed above.  Imagine what 8 hours per week could do.  Even more importantly, think about the things you did this week.  Could you have found four hours to dedicate to someone else?

Throughout the whole year, people have, upon hearing about our pledge, asked us the same questions over and over.  It seems like this would be a good time to answer some of those.  First, "How do you find the time for that?"  That answer is easy.  We make the time.  We plan ahead and we make giving a priority.  Jen and are are both very busy professionals.  We work 50 to 70 hour work weeks, but we did not have trouble making this work.  Jen, in her tenacity as our scheduling secretary, made sure that we were always looking ahead and that we always talked about what was coming up so that she could find the places to fit the volunteering in.  I will concede that there are some fundamental things which allowed us to do this work.  First, we are financially secure ourselves.  We have what we need and so we could think of what others need.  Also, we do not have children, young or otherwise.  If we did, it would have been a lot harder to make this work.  That said, we also have seen many, many people bringing their kids along to volunteer and teaching them about taking care of others.  The bottom line is that we wanted to bring this work into our lives and we found a way to make that happen.

Another common question, "Well, your year is up... Are you going to stop now?"  The short answer to this question is that we are going to stop worrying about doing something every week.  The long answer is that this kind of work is now part of us, and we could not stop if we wanted to.  We have made so many friends and developed such a habit of doing this work, that it would be hard to stop now.  The entire point of this venture was to stop talking about volunteering and actually force ourselves to do it.  We always wanted to but did not make the time for it.  Now that there is room for it in our lives, we will keep volunteering, because it is fun, and fulfilling and part of who we are now.  I am also going to leave this blog up, with this as the last post, to be used as a resource for those who are interested.

"Were you ever scared?"  This one always takes me by surprise.  I never gave even one thought to whether or not I would be safe at any of the places we worked.  We certainly have worked in places where there are dangerous people, and we certainly have seen the face of mental illness.  We have been to "bad" neighborhoods.  We have heard stories of violence.  But every place we worked has systems in place to deal with problems.  Given the communities they serve, these organizations have to be ready for the unexpected, and they are.  The other side of this is that the patrons, the clients, the beneficiaries of these services are vehemently protective of the organizations and the people who work there.  They understand the benefits they are being given, and they are grateful to the point of putting themselves in harm's way before allowing a volunteer to come to harm.  It is one of the more amazing things we learned in this process.  The final point here is that while there are some scary people that use some of these services, they are few and far between - so much so that we barely ever saw them.  Most of the patrons are friendly and grateful, even if they are a little strange, or eccentric, or even mentally ill.  In short, no, we were never scared.

"What have you learned?"  This is the big one, and almost impossible to answer, but let me try.  We have learned that helping others is never one sided.  When you help someone else, you help yourself as well.  You also have a good chance that the person you helped will go on to help another.  We have learned that we can afford the time and money to help others, to a much greater degree than we had previously believed.  We have learned that one of the greatest gifts you can give a person is dignity - to recognize them as a worthy, complete human being.  How many times have you said "No" to a person begging on the street without looking them in the eye?  Try to say it while looking into their eyes.  It is a lot harder.  The best thing we did all year was to look at the patrons of these organizations as people, not beggars, not homeless.  To borrow from India, we let the god in us see the god in them.  When you see dignity dawning on the face of someone who has been ignored as something less than human all day, all week, all year, you surely do see the face of god.  We learned what a wonderful habit that can be.

We also learned that anyone can be in need.  The people who are hungry in this country are not all dumb.  They are not all lazy.  They are not all mentally ill.  They are people in situations they did not plan on.  Some have addictions.  Some have mental illness.  Some are unlucky.  Some are trying to rebuild their lives.  Some are just trying to get through the day.  Some are just trying not to give up.  However they came to their need, we learned that judgement is worthless.  If these people could be in better control of their lives, they would be, and wasting time judging them will not help them.  It does not eliminate their need and they do not have time or energy to even notice a condemnation.  Condemn as you will, they still need help.  Anyone can wind up homeless, and any time I have doubted that in the past year, I have met someone to prove my doubt foolish.  Anyone can be homeless.  Anyone can be struck down, surprised by a force that they did not see coming, and judging that person is the best way to get in line for a fall yourself.

I see looking back that this is, by far, the longest post I have written all year, so I think it is time to sum it up. I think the best way to do that is with some thanks and with a call to action.  The thanks begin with the people we have enjoyed working with so much: Carrie and Erin and Elizabeth at Lakeview Pantry; Scott at Common Pantry; Tony at the House of Mary and Joseph and all the fantastic staff at Feed My Starving Children, The Greater Chicago Food Depository, Top Box Foods and Breaking Bread.  These people work very long hours for almost no money.  They do it because they believe in the work, and without them there would have been no work for us to do.  I also need to thank my incredible wife again for putting in all the time, the phone calls, the web searches, etc in order to make sure we always had work scheduled.  She was also constantly looking for new places we could go.  She was as or more dedicated to this idea than I was, and in fact it was her idea in the first place.  She is an amazing woman and I am lucky she chose me.  The last thank you is for you, the reader.  Thanks for sharing in our journey and for being at all interested in my take on all this.  As of last count, we had about 1300 page views, which makes me pretty happy.  So, thank you...

Lastly... a call to action.  It is simple.  Go out and do something.  Anything.  Anywhere.  Use some of the talent you have been given and do something nice for someone else.  You can look through these pages and find many good opportunities, but there are literally thousands more out there.  Find a cause you believe in and do something to forward that cause.  Go to GiveWell.org and find a charity that uses their money well.  Go to www.thelifeyoucansave.com for more ideas.  Talk to your friends.  See what they do and go with them.  Bring them with you.  In the wake of the Newtown shootings, Anne Curry asked people to do 26 good deeds in honor of those killed that day.  I say do 26 good deeds because it will start the habit.  Do 26 and then 26 more.  Make space in your life to consciously and actively do good for others, and you will find yourself happier, more peaceful and more full of life than you are now.  Habit is everything.  Be in the habit of helping others.  Be in the habit of spreading your habit to others.  Hatred and fear seem to be winning right now, and changing gun laws won't help, and putting a little more money into mental health facilities won't help.  What will help is cultivating the habits of love and kindness.  What will help is giving up our habits of judgement and separation.  That is my challenge to you - let go of your fears and be a force for some kind of good, whatever good moves you.  Go out and do something.  Anything.  Anywhere.