Some of the most illustrious, talented people to grace this earth have walked the halls of Northwestern University: Dick Gephardt, the drummer from Arcade Fire, the girl from Father of the Bride and Father of the Bride II: Martin Short Is a Crazy Foreign Gay Man!, me. But perhaps my most important and influential fellow alumnus is none other than Stephen Colbert. Colbert returned to campus a few weeks ago to give the university’s commencement speech.
The speech contained many nuggets of Colbert wisdom, including “Under no circumstances should you wear white jeans. Even on a cruise. Also: don’t go on a cruise,” and “You have been told to follow your dreams. But what if it’s a stupid dream?” But what stuck out to me most was Colbert’s message about service:
After I graduated from here, I moved down to Chicago and did improv. Now there are very few rules to improvisation, but one of the things I was taught early on is that you are not the most important person in the scene. Everybody else is. And if they are the most important people in the scene, you will naturally pay attention to them and serve them. But the good news is you’re in the scene too. So hopefully to them you’re the most important person, and they will serve you. No one is leading, you’re all following the follower, serving the servant.
You cannot win improv.
And life is an improvisation. You have no idea what’s going to happen next, and you are mostly just making things up as you go along.
And like improv, you cannot win your life…
In my experience, you will truly serve only what you love, because, as the prophet says, service is love made visible.
If you love your friends, you will serve your friends.
If you love community, you will serve your community.
If you love money, you will serve your money.
And if you love only yourself, you will serve only yourself. And you will have only yourself.
So no more winning. Instead, try to love others and serve others, and hopefully find those who love and serve you in return.
You can listen to the full speech here.
Being the type of person I am (specifically, the type who listens to commencement speeches voluntarily and enjoys them), I was quite struck by Colbert’s words. Probably everyone here has had to sit through a graduation speech at one point or another– either for yourself, a family member, or when you snuck into that ceremony to steal free food because you were drunk and hungry– and they’re almost all about learning to serve others, find meaning in life, and go out and be a part of the community. It’s the gospel of anti-selfishness, the one that we feel inspired by and then promptly forget when we go out into the real word, find a job, and become weighed down with the need to pay car and mortgage payments, obligations to children and family, and an obsessive need to read blogs on the internet.
So, this is my attempt to try to convince us all to return to those halcyon days when we were lovers, dreamers, and watched Kermit the Frog with a non-ironic eye. In other words, when we thought we all could make the world a better place. Because the thing is, we can.
I first started volunteering because my high school required me to log a certain amount of hours in order to graduate. I spent many a summer afternoon wheeling hospice residents down to pokeno and fending off their attempts to stuff my pockets with fun-size Snickers. It wasn’t exactly the most fulfilling way to spend my volunteering time, and it wasn’t until I was in college and started spending Saturday mornings at a hospital for children with chronic illnesses that I started to feel a real connection and a sense of purpose in what I was doing. The kids spent so much time in the hospital, and their families couldn’t always be with them. These were kids who had been routinely hospitalized for various conditions, and the best thing that anyone could provide for them (aside from the best medical care) was companionship.
I now volunteer once a week as a tutor and mentor for a sixth grader. He and I have been paired up for three years and hanging out with him is often the best part of my week. We read together, have math contests, paint and draw, and play basketball. He’s a great kid, and our friendship means a lot to me.
Maybe you’re not into kids. Maybe you’re into animals. Or you like building houses. Or you work as an accountant and can help do taxes for low-income families one Saturday a month. Or you love model railroads (hi Dad!) and could afford to spend some time running the train layout at the Museum of Science and Industry. No matter what your interests are, there’s a volunteer position that will appeal to you and, more importantly, a non-profit or school or other institution that needs your help. People on both sides of the political spectrum talk a good game about how they think America could be a better place. But how many of us put our money– or more accurately, our time— where our mouths are? I know, you’re busy. We’re all busy. But if you can make time for the gym, or make time to catch American Idol, you have a couple of hours to volunteer. Once I started volunteering and made it a habit, I’ve never looked back.
I love my city, and I want it to be a better place. I want its schools to be better, its children to have more fun and have someone to bring them M&Ms and help explain their math concepts a little better. I can’t do it all by myself, obviously, but that’s Colbert’s point about winning. You can’t win volunteering– you just give what little you have and hope it helps. Maybe it won’t, but you can’t know unless you try. Our organization is always short-staffed and desperate for more volunteers, and I would imagine we’re not alone in this struggle.
Here are a few organizations that could help you find a place to volunteer. There are thousands more local organizations, but this is a start:
- For people who like to build stuff: Habitat for Humanity
- For people who like animals: ASPCA and The Humane Society
- For people who like kids: Big Brothers Big Sisters
- For people who can do taxes: Chicago’s Ladder Up
- For a wider list of volunteering opportunities: Idealist.org
