Community Service and the Road to Hell

Do I sound bitter? Gee...do ya think?  I have always been a community minded individual.  I love the community in which I live. Over the years our community has oftentimes faced seemingly insurmountable problems so I tried to help in any small way I was able.  I tend to get overly involved and personally buy into whatever it is I am trying to do because I don’t do things half.  It takes 100% to get the job done. 

Sounds good!  Well maybe not so much.  As the saying goes: the road to hell is paved with good intentions.  I have learned some hard lessons.  Community Service is not for the faint of heart, or for those looking for the best in mankind, or for those actually expecting to accomplish something or make a difference.  It is tough.  It is hard.  And common sense is at a premium.

One of my first do-gooder ventures involved a church council whose Sunday night meetings would go on ad-infinitum.  One Sunday evening they debated for over two hours whether to turn the pilot light off the gas oven in the church kitchen.  They tabled it to the next meeting.  That was my last church council meeting.  

Then there were the service organizations.  For 20 some years I played God Bless America and catchy club tunes on the piano for a local service organization taking the place of lady who they paid $20.00/week and gave a free lunch.  Back in the day, that was good money for 15 minutes worth of work.  When she retired, I volunteered my services….no money and no lunch.  That was okay until the club became the personal property of a group of members who decided club rules only applied to other members, and began to give recognition awards based on personal connections instead of actual service.  One member got in my face and pointed his finger just centimeters from my nose because I had the gall to ask him to cut one of his presentations short that we had all seen a thousand times before. We had a paid guest who was on the clock.  I played God Bless America, got up, and walked out never to return again. I did not receive one telephone call asking what had happened. 

Which leads to a local youth leadership program that centered on getting young folks under the age of 35 involved in community affairs with a project.  The parent organization, which originally started out as a business organization, evolved into to a social justice group and cut the youth program off at the knees.  A lot of good young people were left out in the cold…and that was a real shame. 

My latest venture involved and involves beautiful things like art and music.  What I found was that even where things are supposed to be beautiful, the underbelly is just as dirty as the rest of the world if not more so.  Huge amounts of money changing hands…petty jealousies….political lobbyists…politics of the worst kind….unending egos.  I will always work with local arts and culture organizations in town, but much sadder and much wiser and with lower expectations. 

Although not applicable to all organizations, here are some truths I learned over the last 35 years:

1)   No matter what the organization, the craziest person in the room will be calling the shots.

2)  No matter how crazy that individual might be, you will end up doing the work for the person who is paid to do the work. 

3)   If you are one of the anointed ones, the world will bow down when you walk in the room and hang onto every single word you have to say.   You might even be paid because you are...you know...one of the anointed ones.  

4)  No matter how hard you work or how hard you try, when they can no longer get what they want from you and you have outlived your usefulness they will show you the door telling you how no good you are as you are making your exit. 

5)  And when you are gone, the organization will keep on doing what it did before you were there until it can't afford to do it anymore.  Then it will simply fade away.  

Don’t get me wrong.  Over the years I have met wonderful people who work with the best of intentions.  Many are still my friends and hopefully will be my friends through the years.  But it’s a scary world out there and they are volunteers.  Volunteers can only do so much. The business world is tough.  But try the wonderful world of non-profits to see how really tough it can be.

So at the ripe of old age of 65 maybe I have finally learned my lesson.  Never again….until the next time.  People like me are like the scorpion stinging the frog carrying him across the river.  "Why did you do that," the frog asked. "Now you have killed us both."   "I can't help myself," said the scorpion.  "It's my nature!!"