DaveOlson.ca

You’ve been a giver by just writing this. Thank you. I’m grateful to know you.

Dave,

I appreciate your high praise, and I want to echo the thoughts that serving others is its own reward. When you genuinely know that you have helped someone, it’s a great feeling that is difficult to describe.

Guess I’ll just have to keep doing it, and maybe someday I’ll be able to communicate better what it feels like!

Here’s another twist. I was in the “service” industry for a very long time making people happy “serving” what they wanted when they wanted. And I loved it. It did though take it’s toll on me and I opted to leave.

No matter what industry one is in, we are all here to serve. Because if we cannot help/assist others in giving what they want, for what then is the reason for our work?

I told many who disliked what they were doing, working in the restaurant business, to leave. One is unable to serve others with passion if the work is disliked and it shows.

Remember – TIPS means “to insure prompt service”. Perhaps we should all think about that when we start our day. I know I do!

I’ve given this a lot of thought too, and I’m going to do a follow up post in the future. I feel like the real reason why some people serve, and while others do not is because everyone does what they need to in order to have self-approval. You do what you can, so that you can live with yourself. That’s the fundamental truth.

Can you think of a case where this is NOT the fundamental truth?

I’m saying that people will ultimately do things that they themselves approve of. They could get a great inner feeling from serving, and nothing more, and this feeling makes them feel better than if they had not done the deed. This is enough. Another person may not contribute or donate, because holding on to their time or money is in sync with their self-approval. We all do things towards that self-approval, it’s just that the self-approval is different on an individual basis.

Army bootcamp is a great example. They will endure bootcamp, in order to prove to themselves that they can do it, or to get a job with benefits, or to make their family proud, or to serve their country, etc. Getting to these goals will ensure their self-approval. They will in fact feel better about themselves, do to this approval, than if they had not gone through the bootcamp.

I could be wrong, I often am, but I don’t think this self-approval that I speak of is time sensitive.
For example, you could give up your last 5 bucks to a homeless many and have to walk 10 miles home, because that was your train money. You get the instant self approval of helping someone, and you not only endure the hassle of walking afterwards, but you do it happily.

Or, you can first get through the boot camp happily, because you know of future pay off. Or you can drag your feet through boot camp because you know you will disappoint family if you don’t, which also means you will not have your own self-approval.

It still comes down to doing for your self-approval.

What do you think?

Hi Dave and Alex,
Sounds like a problem of semantics.

I’ve actually agreed with Alex through this whole discussion. The idea in my head has been one of self-preservation. Theologists and ethicists often argue, far better than I might, whether it’s possible tor a human to be totally selfless . . . but I believe that we’re imbued with an instinct to live — put on Earth to know, love, and serve God and each other. That’s part of why suicide isn’t really an option.

Choosing to serve is choosing to find how service can be a good thing for others and ourselves. We do serve because it makes us feel good, feel like we contributed, feel something . . . were there absolutely no payoff for serving . . . if we saw absolutely no benefit that we personally valued, we would not do it.

Or to say it another way, if we thought serving was valueless or wrong, we wouldn’t serve. So we must get something from it.

Liz,

I was thinking more about what you said about suicide and self-preservation. Self-approval isn’t exactly self preservation. The fact that suicide could be such a selfish act, leaving family members and loved ones in pain due to this death, is a point towards self-approval. You didn’t care about the family, you sacrificed them, to get rid of your own pain and trauma via suicide.

Instinct is a funny thing. It’s actually a learned behavior as well, for the most part.

One person’s instinct could be to push the child out of the way, and get hit by a moving car.
This appears like a very brave act.

One person’s instinct might be to hide behind another’s, when there is a gun being pointed in the room. At first glance it seems cowardly.

There are many different representations of what appears to be. However, everything we do is because we are aligned with doing that action. Even when we feel like we have to, and we are pleasing someone else, it serves us better to do it than to disappoint another.

Going back to what you said, premeditation isn’t a necessary condition of my theory. Even split second instinctual/blink decisions are done in the name of self-approval.