“I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.”  Rabindranath Tagore-Bengali poet, philosopher, polymath 1913 Nobel Laureate in Literature.

Service. Such an ambiguous concept in today’s parlance. Being in service in the past meant not just paid employment to serve, but also a class categorization. Being in the service has a military connotation. More generally, even in respected jobs, there is an overtone of being subject to the demands of others—not always a pleasant position. A willingness to serve requires or reflects an attitude often not respected in today’s ME culture. Public service? Too often scorned and denigrated, or distorted. Is service a contribution or a subordination?

And yet, Tagore links service directly to joy. An acquaintance used this quote in a speech I heard and it resonated with me, but I have no deep knowledge of Tagore’s canon to place these words in the larger context of his oeuvre.

In his sermon, “The Drum Major,” the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., noted that service is open to all. “Everybody can be great...because everybody can serve. You don't have to have a college degree to serve. You don't have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love” (kinginstitute.stanford.edu/king-papers/documents/drum-major-instinct-sermon-delivered-ebenezer-baptist-church). Service need not look big or flashy. Indeed, it usually does not.
Two men from different sides of the world, writing roughly a half century apart; one Christian, one from the Hindu tra-dition, but both see the positive return for service.
When service is tied to acting on one’s principles, to contributing to the welfare of the community, it offers meaning and purpose. Seeing beyond oneself is a reason to get up and go out. To do. Of course, one must seek to choose one’s purpose with care, but there are many worthy options from the very personal to the societal.

At a recent memorial for a man whose life held much public service, a mentee of his told a story of service. At a moment when she despaired for the state of the world, she asked him how to go on. He replied that when you despair you must not give up, but get up and go to work to make the world better for as many people as you can. Service.
What do you value? Who do you value? No one has to save the whole world, but we can each be a building block. And just as it takes a lot of Legos to build a skyscraper, it takes a lot of service to build a community, but each brick and each person has a function and a value to the whole structure.

I wish you joy.