Re: I thought you might be interested...lemurlingMarch 13 2006, 20:34:51 UTC
I think the idea of serving others is a pretty powerful way to bring equality to the world. If each of us had had to spend a year, either in Americorp, or the PeaceCorps, or something like CityYear, that serves inner cities, we'd have a stronger society. It's easy to say this, not having had any experience like that, of course, but I sure could have used it, just going to school part-time for a year after high school, and serving in a foreign country, or in East LA, or wherever. I've done a little traveling, and I would love to live in France for a year, heck, if I could keep my same job and not be impoverished myself at the end of it, I might be willing to live somewhere third-world even. But otherwise I don't have the courage or the conviction to do it now, the way Dorie did, and sacrifice the progress I've made in my career, or the chance to maybe own a little something, someday. So I try to reassure my conscience that when I retire, I will teach or find some similar way to serve. But I wish someone had pushed me into that kind of opportunity when I was young and lost and wrapped up in myself and my lower-middle-class angst. I have my own ways of gaining perspective now, but I could have used a massive dose of it then, and been a much better person for it.
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