Anytime a person asks for advice on how to make friends, build connections, find a mate or not be lonely, somebody is guaranteed to recommend volunteering for a cause that “you care about”. Many companies I worked had an annual paid volunteer day where they solicited employees to team up and work together for a day pulling weeds, picking up trash, feeding the homeless, etc.
I’ve personally benefited from volunteers who worked at SCORE offering business advice, from volunteers at animal rescue groups where I adopted my pets, and from volunteers at hospitals who gave directions and helped when wheelchairs were needed.
I have neighbors who do volunteer services at their church, for community organizations and for local homeless shelters. My own mother was a volunteer VISTA worker teaching migrant farm workers for a year after she graduated from high school. Years later, as an adult, she delivered meals on wheels. After she retired from nursing, she regularly visited the elderly in nursing homes.
In my own life, I spent 8 years actively engaged in AA, trying to help others get sober and clean up their lives. That was one of the most enriching, transformational and rewarding experiences of my life.
In all of these cases (except the work volunteer day), every person volunteered because they wanted to help other people, animals, the community etc. I don’t think any of us chose to volunteer to improve our social lives. I’m sure it did in some cases, but the primary motivator for volunteering was helping out.
So when a podcaster, advice columnist, therapist or journalist recommends volunteering as a way to address the “loneliness epidemic”, it made me wonder – Do people really volunteer as much as they talk about volunteering?
I’d guess not.
I suspect most people who volunteer are drawn to do it for the same reasons me, and the people I wrote abut above did it. We wanted to help others. We felt like we owed something to the people/organizations who helped us. We wanted to give back because we had been fortunate.
Maybe it would be more effective to tell people they should volunteer to feel better about themselves. Maybe we should talk about our own volunteer experiences and what happened to us, instead of pitching it as “a way to meet someone to date and make friends”.
You might meet the man/woman of your dreams. You might make lifelong friendships. It might become the answer to your loneliness problem.
But it might be even much better than that.
As I type this, I realize my own hypocrisy. I left AA in 2012. That chapter of my life had closed. Since then, I’ve occasionally considered volunteering to help animal shelters, to be a Big Brother, to work in hospice, or to help with other local organizations.
And yet, I have not.
Whenever I looked into it, nothing appealed enough to adjust my schedule or rearrange my daily activities.
Perhaps I should take my own advice and find somewhere I can give back too.