WHEN ONE hears the word "volunteering," a positive image of someone selflessly committing himself to the advancement of another person or group often comes to mind. For the most part, volunteering is seen as a positive thing, an act of good will that everyone should strive to meet whenever he has the time.
Yet although volunteering almost always is seen in a positive light, it now is starting to become more of a duty or requirement rather than a personal choice. In a time when volunteering is almost a necessary part of a good student's academic record, it seems to have lost the beauty of its most basic principle - people doing good for the sake of doing good.
When I was in high school, a vast majority of the adults in my life would point out to me how volunteering and being involved with helping others was a necessary component of getting into any decent college. In fact, from an early age, volunteering was something my parents had imprinted into my brain as necessary for being a good person, which is necessary for getting anywhere - heaven, college, employment and so forth.
As I grew, however, I began to understand that the idea behind volunteering is to help people less fortunate than oneself through a variety of different efforts. Volunteering makes you a better person. Yet since graduating high school and attending college, I have started to question the accuracy of this characterization of volunteering.
The fact that volunteering has become such a necessary part of going anywhere in life has diminished the full beauty of what it means to actually volunteer and help others. Instead of groups of students volunteering to aid those suffering from poverty in their communities, many individuals see it as a way to show colleges how round and understanding they are.
Volunteering has become a way for us to say, "Hey, I'm a good person - just look at all these individuals I have helped out." What we no longer seem to respect is that fundamentally volunteering is about going out and helping people without receiving anything in return.
The beauty of volunteering was originally that the person doing these great services was undertaking them because he cared about those he was trying to help out, not because he thought it would come back to benefit him in the end. Granted, it is nice once in a while to have a good deed returned, but that is not the point of volunteering. With volunteering, you are thought to be helping others with the understanding that there is nothing for you to get out of it in the end - other than, perhaps, personal satisfaction at helping better someone else's life.
But as everyone scrambles to get into college and graduate school, attain jobs and earn internships, volunteering almost has become an unpaid but necessary task. Gone are the days of selfless volunteering and in are the days in which everyone is fighting for volunteer opportunities that will advance their positions through the taking advantage of others' misfortunes. Sure, it may be better that people help others for their own reasons rather than not helping at all, and yes, I rather would have us helping others even if it does not come out of the purest intentions in our heart.
Nevertheless, it is unfortunate to see the changed nature of this originally great act.
Although volunteering always will be around, and I encourage people to continue volunteering based on whatever reasoning they may have, I would like others to take the time and volunteer for something simply because it is the right thing to do. Do something to help someone without actually expecting anything in return besides your own personal satisfaction that you have helped make someone's life a little better. During your day, try and do small acts of kindness to those around you, even those you dislike, even if it is not something necessarily along the lines of volunteering. Just a simple, kind gesture can have a positive impact, and we all can work toward a more selfless world.
Bradlee Palmquist is a Viewpoint writer for The Cavalier Daily.
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