The first time I entered the health center I’ve worked at for twenty years, I saw a man, maybe mid 70s, greeting everyone at the check-in desk. He wore a broad smile, the contagious kind; the kind you couldn’t help but reflect. He was a volunteer. A concept as foreign to me as snake charming.
I quickly learned that our fledgling healthcare facility was heavily armed with a surplus of volunteers. While they all performed the usual volunteer-level tasks, this wasn’t your normal assembly of retired persons. These were some seriously hard workers, all with a lifetime of experience to share. For free. All walks of life and levels of success. I was confused. If you can still make money, why spend your retirement doing it for free? Why not just lounge by the pool? Walk on the beach? Or even go back to work. Volunteering sure must feel good, but I have bills to pay. So did they. And yes, many were financially set or more but still they had something figured out I didn’t.
For the first few years, I worked alongside too many volunteers to count, an absolutely essential part of our workforce.
Before I forget, I have to say that in writing this I stumbled into a new belief, if you live in Florida, you know we have a lot of sunshine and a lot of retired people. The retired folks who volunteer are the second greatest natural resource we have. It’s tough to beat out the sun.
So, I knew most of the volunteers pretty well; it got slow in the summer and I had the privilege to have them as patients or work on projects outside our department. Some I knew causally, some became friends, but all of them did it for a reason I still had no idea about.
One day one of my paid coworkers asked me if I knew today’s greeter. A volunteer. The same man I saw my first day. I knew his name, and he knew mine, but no, I didn’t know anything about him. With a glow of infatuation in their eye, the coworker informed me our greeter was in fact very successful, a higher up in a major company. He was also almost 90. At that moment, I was blown away he was over 80, but not much concern for what anyone did or had accomplished. To me, all the volunteers were impressive, the way they worked and helped every day. And they probably took more pride in it than half the paid employees. Myself included. They were the foundation of a health center that was the footprint for the growing community. So it was a couple of years later I had occasion to have lunch with this particular volunteer. He was talking to another of our invaluable assets about volunteering at the hospital the next day. I don’t know if my face conveyed the surprise that he had more than one volunteer gig. So I had to ask. You volunteer at the hospital, too? He actually had three volunteer jobs and did them each twice a week for about 4+hours a day. And the guy was smiling! Wouldn’t golf, tennis, or yeah, I’m back to snake charming, be a better way to spend retirement? He explained to me that while he enjoyed golf; it wasn’t what made him happy. His time working had brought him a lot of success and personal satisfaction, and he felt blessed to be in his position. He explained It was during a visit to the company he last worked he found something missing. At the huddle/water cooler area, the morning scene, he arrived. They patted him on the back, joked about retired life and floated some updates about the company he helped build. But it was when everybody left for their offices, departments and work assignments he realized he had nowhere to go. The broad smile, for the first time, gone. A distant look in his eyes, like a parent who’d lost a child. I can’t say I remember every word of our conversation but I have these times in life I refer to as “anvil to the head moments”. Kind of like a bugs bunny cartoon except the anvil is an epiphany. He said “at that moment I knew I needed to wake with a purpose.” Then he smiled. So did I.
I got it. Volunteering suddenly made sense. Purpose. The word had new meaning and is rarely uttered in conversation without me homing in on it, reflecting about its ever-expanding meaning or thinking of the man who gave me a new perspective.
We never had another meaningful conversation, but for a few years after, I saw him and always looked forward to saying hello to him, seeing that smile and knowing he’d taught me something I would carry with me.
Now purpose is a powerful word. It’s why you’re here, after all. We all have a personal interpretation for our own purpose. You don’t need to volunteer to have purpose. Many of us have jobs, young families, older relatives to care for, friends in need of a little help. Purpose.
So, do we actually have to be helping in a physical capacity? Do we even have to lift a finger? Not everyone can. A 94year old woman I had the privilege to work with and get to know had suffered a severe stroke. She told me her husband had been gone for many years, her physical pain was constant, she had trouble with nearly all activities we take for granted, felt like a burden and didn’t know why God just didn’t take her. The look in her eyes just crushed me. What do I say? Then she smiled and said, “I guess he still has work for me to do”. This little warrior went to church every day, hurting, tired, wanting to be done with it all, and said prayers for the people in her life. She had little dolls she whispered prayers to at night for people who were important to her. I can’t tell you how honored I was when she showed me my doll and how she said prayers every night for my family. I said prayers for her too. And for the people who drove her to church, to therapy, the store or wherever. Purpose.
Over my years in that one building, I have met more good people, doing good things and witnessed their positive fulfillment from having a purpose. And when they tell me about it, they smile. And when I think of them, so do I.
My patients, the ones I’m supposed to help, have taught me more than I would have ever learned in a lifetime on my own. Whether they knew it or not, they served a purpose to me and I hope to pass it on. For now my family, my career, writing and a few other activities I have give me my purpose. And when the time comes that a change in life brings me to a new time to choose a new purpose, well, there will be one unhappy cobra enjoying the confines of his basket for the time being.
