Sometimes, servers shouldn't be choosers.
At the requests of a professor and a Sunday school teacher, respectively, I volunteered this weekend at Muncie's Living Lightly Fair and the Delaware County Preparedness Fair.
At both events, I stood at the entrance, smiled and greeted attendees and handed out brochures.
No starving families were fed because of my participation. No impoverished children were taught the value of education. No houses were built or habitats cleaned.
Still, I'm glad I went.
For so many of us, college is an eye-opening period of growth when we gain an increased awareness of the greater world and the problems in it. At the same time, it's often a very insulated four years, during which we live on or near the same small campus and focus a majority of our time and attention on the problems and concerns of our own, individual lives.
It can feel disheartening to know of the big problems in the world and not be able to do much to correct them. Handing out fliers and smiling at strangers at events that promote food storage and the use of LED light bulbs just doesn't seem to matter much in a world that also has sex trafficking and wars fought with child soldiers.
But staying home does nothing to fix that disconnect.
I'm using these four years to learn, read, research and try to figure out how to get to a place where I can make a difference when it comes to international human rights problems. But I'm not there yet. None of us are.
In the meantime, campus is miraculously close to Minnetrista and the Delaware County Fairgrounds, where this weekend's fairs occurred and many community events are held. There's something special about standing in the Saturday sun for a couple hours, watching kids tug their grandparents along to see Sid the Science Kid or clamber to make clay fish.
We may not be changing the world, but by volunteering, we're contributing our time to hopefully bettering the days of the people in our small, Muncie world. We're helping the people around us. If we never do this, how will we know how to make a difference in the lives of people with whom we have seemingly nothing in common?
If we are the kind of people who want to serve, we will always serve. Wherever we are, in whatever capacity.
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