I just got through watching Returning the Favor with Mike Rowe, and I need to tell you about it, not because it's good television, it is but because it's a blueprint for something we've largely forgotten how to do.
The show finds ordinary people doing extraordinary things in their own backyards. Not celebrities. Not foundations with nine figure endowments. Just men and women who looked at a crack in their community and decided to fill it themselves. Rowe shows up, tells their story and then hands them the resources to keep going. But here's the thing they were already going. They didn't wait for a camera crew or a check. They just started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtXjNWXOvtE
What I took from it isn't complicated:
Find the problems. Show up. Be part of the solution. Do the work. Repeat.
It doesn't require a nonprofit or a degree or anyone's permission. It requires presence. Maybe that means mentoring a kid who's got no one showing him how to use a wrench. Maybe it's checking on the elderly neighbor whose gutters are overflowing. Maybe it's just being the person who actually answers the call instead of letting it go to voicemail.
If you've got an hour, watch the show. But more importantly once you turn it off, go outside and find your thing. Every community has cracks. Every one of them is an invitation.
The question isn't whether the work needs doing. It's whether you'll be the one to do it.
No comments:
Post a Comment