[2022-05-14] Joy in service
Today, my brother asked me what I've been getting up to. "Nothing much," I responded. "Just cooking and baking and writing. Puttering around, really."
It wasn't a very satisfactory answer, considering how busy I am and how fulfilled I feel.
This evening, I came across this quote by Rabindranath Tagore, a poet, writer, playwright and winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature:
I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.
This seemed like the basis of a much better reply to my brother's question than I had been able to muster on the spur of the moment.
I spend my days in the service of others (and myself) and find joy in doing so. Everything I do—cooking, baking, blogging, shopping, cleaning, emailing, commenting, doing interviews—is elevated when I do it with the goal of helping other people.
My husband tells me that I never stop, that I'm always doing something. I have long thought this made me a workaholic (and I don't dispute this label). But I could just as easily be called a person who finds joy in service. This, surely, is a much kinder characterization of my tendency to work all the time.
So if you, too, find joy in service, embrace it. Be proud of it. Do it until the joy wanes and then do something else. Serve yourself while serving others by doing what you love. Do ordinary things with extraordinary love. Be joyful.
