Beginnings

I guess you could say that the disease is hereditary. Both of my parents were organization activists and frequent presidents, so my involvements in some measure can be construed as seeking their approbation. (It should be noted that my brother totally escaped the disease.)

Although I became president of various clubs I belonged to in high school, I did not pursue any kind of college activities in the organizational world. I did become an almost accidental member of the student government, and the equally accidental chair of its committee on student organizations. (Perhaps a harbinger, but not a deep commitment -- I was too square and too centrist for the far-left campus group which had co-opted me to really feel part of things.) The real learning experience came from watching the opposition party fight our initiatives not on their merits or lack thereof, but using a barrage of ploys based on parliamentary procedure. Ever since, I have essentially kept my distance from Robert's Rules.

During the year I spent living with my parents right after college, my dad made one or two mild efforts to interest me in joining his pet organizations, but I resisted for a variety of reasons not germane to this blog. When I left home to return to the big city where I had gone to college, I did have the insight to recognize that I couldn't build my social life around my friends in graduate school, since they would leave and I would stay. I knew I had to transition off the campus and into the community.

I hadn't yet figured out how to do it when I was invited to lunch by the new administrator of a social welfare agency who had come from my home town, and on whose board there my mother had sat. In the course of our get-acquainted conversation, and knowing my parents' track record, he asked what I was doing by way of volunteer activity. When I replied, Nothing, he asked why -- and I said I had never been asked. His reply has stuck with me and guided me for more years than I care to remember -- Where does it say that you have to wait to be asked?

LESSON: Volunteer has two meanings -- 1, you don't get paid for what you do. 2, you raise your hand when the task is presented and take it on.