Well, I left my community service to the last minute.\u00a0 Though if given the opportunity to do this again I probably wouldn’t choose to put such an assignment off, the scrambling my carelessness bred ended up yielding a unique opportunity culminating in\u00a0what I found to be some pretty interesting conclusions.\u00a0<\/p>\n
After all organized group community service outings had passed and a mere three days remained before the assignment deadline, I was left with few options.\u00a0 I decided to begin my service by picking up trash for a few hours at Belle Isle–easy, enjoyable given the weather, and a prime opportunity for some good, old-fashioned alone time.\u00a0 Like many of my classmates have mentioned in their posts, some of the stuff littering the island and its banks was no less than revolting.\u00a0 It was then while picking through the cigarette butts, beer cans, and food wrappers that I decided to spend my remaining hours over the remaining two days scouring the same island to monitor and compare the way the litter accumulated on a day-by-day basis.<\/p>\n
The following day, I\u00a0returned to\u00a0coves between rocks patches of trail that I had left clean and free of litter the day before\u00a0to find that the invading matter had found its way back.\u00a0 Some of the litter was old: dirty, torn, and blown in by the wind or borne by the changing tides.\u00a0 Some, however, was new, fresh.\u00a0 This cycle illustrated\u00a0the concept of humans as an irreverent\u00a0in\u00a0the face of the natural world\u00a0in terms more poignant than any I’ve experienced before.\u00a0 How could someone come to this place–this green, rushing, vital place–and so carelessly\u00a0inject their ugly, poisonous refuse?\u00a0 After only a few hours that day, I had had enough.<\/p>\n
After this veritable loss of faith, returning the third day was no easy feat.\u00a0 However, while dodging bikers and dogs as I crossed the bridge beneath the highway, I felt my bitterness dissolve and flow downstream\u00a0when I noticed a group of middle-school aged kids and their chaperones bouncing down the banks carrying trash bags and wearing rubber gloves not unlike my own.\u00a0\u00a0Just like\u00a0me,\u00a0they passed the group of chain-smoking hipsters stretched out on the rocks like lizards in the sun and\u00a0they probably also picked up the stubs of\u00a0cigarettes and dented cans of cheap\u00a0beer after they left too.\u00a0 Sure, that island and this city and this planet are full of negligence, environmental and otherwise.\u00a0 But for all the negligence, there’s at least a fraction of mindfulness, passion, devotion, and care.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In the eight hours I spent on Belle Isle, I realized that the reason we do community service isn’t just to clean up someone else’s mess.\u00a0 The need for service typically arises from\u00a0an\u00a0inability or failure of an individual or small group to reach a certain milestone.\u00a0 When that need is answered, it’s usually by volunteers in an equally small numbers filling in the gaps because reaching that\u00a0milestone is essential to the healthy functioning of the community<\/em>.\u00a0 When we go to Belle Isle or Pony Pasture or the Westhampton Lake to pick up trash, we don’t go because we want to do what others don’t, we go because we care about the health of our local ecosystems because that’s something that benefits us all.\u00a0 I’m not breaking any new ground when I say that this is what makes community service at its core\u00a0one of the most altruistic, selfless practices–individuals\u00a0devoting their time and effort for the advancement\u00a0of a network of their brothers, individuals in service of the community.<\/p>\n The Winner Is – Danna\/Devotchka<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, I left my community service to the last minute.\u00a0 Though if given the opportunity to do this again I probably wouldn’t choose to put such an assignment off, the scrambling my carelessness bred ended up yielding a unique opportunity … Continue reading