Why I Don't Volunteer

Among my numerous flaws is the fact that I'm not very charitable. Yes, I give money to worthy causes, but I'm stingy with my time. My wife does volunteer work, which is one of the eight thousand things that I admire about her. Still, I've rarely found the motivation to join her on her endeavors. And as a liberal Latino, I really should be out there painting a dilapidated inner-city house or working in a soup kitchen or doing something else community-driven and altruistic.

My reluctance may be due to laziness. Or it could be that my youthful stint performing volunteer work in the barrio of my hometown was illuminating for all the wrong reasons.

I was a teenager, and I accompanied my mother on her rounds giving food to poor people. Again, I went not because I was bursting with the milk and honey of human compassion, but because my mom told me to. She needed someone to lift the heavy bags of donated foodstuffs, and I was informed that I was this person. So we drove around town, and I lugged clunking sacks up flights of stairs, entering each family's hovel with the slump-shouldered, sullen indifference of the American teenager.

The families were overwhelmingly Hispanic, most of them recent immigrants who were still struggling with English. The land of opportunity was a lot harsher than many of them thought it would be, and they were, without exception, grateful for our help.

In fact, they were excessively grateful. I was hugged numerous times, and more than once a weary-looking Latina mother burst into tears or repeated, "Gracias" over and over again.

This was not a moving experience for me. On the contrary, I got embarrassed. I didn't like people falling over themselves praising me, especially when all I had done was carry some groceries. Plus, none of this charity work was my idea and all of it was against my will.

But still they went on in rapid Spanish, until my mother interrupted them to hand over the bill. You see, the food was free -- but it still cost something. The price for being fed was a lecture.

The lecturer was my mother, and the topic was birth control.

My mother and I had noticed that most of the households were overrun with shrieking children. The Latino obsession with family (which I have addressed in these posts more than once) was in full flower. This was one of its negative outcomes.

So my mother tried to explain to these destitute women that they didn't have to keep cranking out babies. She pointed out the obvious -- more children meant more mouths to feed -- and she tried to convince them that in America, they had freedom and choice and other abstractions that didn't exist in their home countries.

But the lectures were not popular with the recipients. Many of the immigrant mothers were mystified about basic birth control, as if my mother were trying to convince them to buy a talking chimpanzee. It was just that exotic.

Those who knew about condoms and birth-control pills and IUDs usually dismissed them out of hand. It was against God, they argued, by which they meant it was against the Catholic Church's teachings. This showed me at a young age, as if I needed any further proof, that religion can do more harm than good and that people will abdicate responsibility for their own personal disasters under the guise of being holy. It also convinced me that we Hispanics will never improve our quality of life as long as we remain fanatically devoted to the pope (again, this is an issue that I have written about in the past).

Other excuses popped up. Some women implied that it was their culture's way to have lots of children, oblivious to the fact that the woman talking to them (my mother) was one hundred percent Latina and had no problem rejecting antiquated cultural norms.

And at least one woman said that her husband refused to wear a condom because it wasn't manly. This was a special moment when my mother translated this particular item for me (and not awkward in the least!).

In any case, many of the immigrants had come to expect my mother's sermon. They had to choose between having their belief system questioned or receiving those enormous rectangular cubes of cheese that exist solely for poor people's consumption. It was their Sophie's Choice.

So they listened, and then they said, "Gracias," and then we left to repeat the whole futile process again. And I never saw anything change, because the intractable factors of religious dogma and old-world thinking are impenetrable.

It's one thing to know that the next generation will be wiser and reject their parents' narrow thinking. It's another to witness the glacial pace of change right in front of you.

So that's why I don't volunteer. Or maybe I'm just lazy.

Comments

[dfburke]

I, too, volunteered as a young man. I've decided to dedicate another year to service now that I'm in my dotage.

As I contemplate the contrast between the two efforts, I realize that I'm going to be much more useful and productive because -- strange as it may sound to teens and 20-somethings -- I've learned a lot during the intervening 4+ decades and now have much more to offer.

I'm hoping many of my fellow Baby Boomers will go forth and do likewise. We may have dropped the ball when we stopped trying to change the world and started lining our own pockets...

I've started a blog that will chronicle my year of service, redux. All are welcome to drop by -- and share if they are so inclined.

http://oldvista.wordpress.com/

[mommamia526]

We all want to obliterate poverty and especially hunger in the world. Muhammad Yunus in *Creating a World Without Poverty* speaks of giving microloans to women, social business and a different kind of capitalism. But he also points out that wealth creates all sorts of problems as well, such as increased pollution. More and more people are competing for the same exhausting resources, and the cost of these resources will increase exponentially. That makes it a primary target for international capitalist holdings and exploitation. Birth control, as is pointed at in the above article, will be mandatory, and we should understand that serial marriages should not be a way for men to circumvent limiting their *output*, because with that we will still be increasing the world population exponentially. I realize that with this post, and my previous one on this thread, I sound like an anti democratic you know what. I am not that. I just think we should be aware of all issues that already are, and will in the future be, associated with the problems we are trying to solve. As Yunus states, Bangladesh may lose territory due to flooding, temperatures will increase and water levels will rise. This will induce massive migrations. Carter is concerned about Palestinians. They have plenty of teritory to migrate to. Their problems are nothing compared to what the world is going to face before the end of this century.

[mommamia526]

Very impressive reasoning. I like it. It is suitable for translation and publication elsewhere. Might I suggest the starving masses in Gaza? The Latin manly men have, I assume, only one (officially in any case) wife, however in some cultures, four at a time is the manly choice, which may turn out to result in having 37 offspring @ the age of 38! It appears that Mr. Jimmy Carter is in Gaza, and it has been reported that a threat to his life might have existed, but, never mind, he is appalled that Israelis let the Gazans die of famine. On the other hand, he does have the impression that Shalit is still alive and may be offered up in the near future for exchange of thousands of terrorists emprisoned, somewhere. Since Gaza used to belong to Egypt, some have suggested that Egypt open its borders for their return. Similarly, of course, Hispanics could also return to their countries of origin to practice their own culture. Everyone is entitled to their own religion, culture and political association, for starters, and democracy, by all means. But adult life is not only about entitlement, it is also about responsibility.