There is something inherently satisfying about building things. I grew up building things with my father. We built anything from a treehouse to a storage shed. It had been a while since I had built anything, but I finally got a chance to build again while volunteering at the William Byrd Community House.
Manual labor is clear cut and simple. There isn’t much thinking involved, but that is refreshing. We spend so much time and waste so much mental energy thinking about trivial things. In our literature group we discussed how having phones with you at all times is distracting. Checking a cellphone takes people out of the moment and diverts their energy to things that often don’t really matter. But when I do manual labor of any sort, especially building, I tend to devote all of my mental energy to accomplishing the task at hand. Labor keeps you in the moment.
How a person approaches volunteering tells you something about what kind of person they are. Some people will devote all of their energy into the volunteer work, while others obviously do not want to be there. These people tend to be very unenthusiastic about the work and about the importance of volunteering. I think that everyone has something to offer people less fortunate than themselves. Maybe that doesn’t involve manual labor, and that is perfectly ok. However, whether the work is something you like or not, I still think attitude is essential to the whole experience. Volunteering is a positive contribution to society, and being obviously reluctant to get involved defeats the purpose. I would rather work twice as hard than have people working with me who do not want to be there. Fortunately, this wasn’t much of a problem when I was at the farm, and I truly look forward to returning and building more.