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New Generations Question
Posted: 1 year ago
I need some help from other Rotarians on something that came up (from a story that I have been working on about service and truth for my book/journals). What I need is a way to answer this: 'Contemporary Story of the Cycle of Life: "Why are we here?" asked the boy of his mother. "Why, to help others!" she replied. "And what are the others here for?" asked the boy. The mother had no answer.'
If you have an answer, please exchange it with 'others' here so that we all have some answers for the New Generation for this special month honoring our young.
Posted: 1 year ago
I need some help from other Rotarians on something that came up (from a story that I have been working on about service and truth for my book/journals). What I need is a way to answer this: 'Contemporary Story of the Cycle of Life: "Why are we here?" asked the boy of his mother. "Why, to help others!" she replied. "And what are the others here for?" asked the boy. The mother had no answer.'
If you have an answer, please exchange it with 'others' here so that we all have some answers for the New Generation for this special month honoring our young.
Perhaps the "others" are here to see that those they have helped will now be in a position to help the other "others."
Norma Taylor-Roderique
Posted: 1 year ago
I think that you might be on the right path ("to have the others help the 'other' others), and then the little boy asked again, "And what does the 'other' others do?"
It may be our language gets in the way. We think in terms of 'here' and 'there' but 'there' is 'here' when we cross borders and boundaries. We phrase people as 'us' and 'them', or 'we' and 'others' but maybe through an act of service we serve ourselves so that we become them and visa versa (we are the others). It may be that the act of reaching out and helping 'so-called others', we actually transform the world so that we are a universal WE. Seniors reach out to New Generations and in the act become young again.
Rumi said it well, "I, you, he, she, we. In the garden of mystic lovers, I, you, he, she, we. These are not true distinctions." The 'other others' are I, you, he, she, we, just in another place, another culture, another space of time, but all of us are "WE". Or as you said, 'the other others'!
One thing about Rotary I like is that when you give service you do not have to define "we" and "others" because it is an act of helping (even if you are not sure that the help is for 'self' or those outside this shell of living). In fact, it is 'service above self', outside 'self but certainly 'through self' therefore there may not be others in the traditional, language sense.
Posted: 1 year ago
Maybe the other people are there for us to ask them to help us help others, or that there aren't any other others..(wow). Everyone needs a hand, once you reach out and grab one you gain one more hand with which you can reach twice as far. I'm so glad the Rotary got ahold of my hand.
Katelyn Hope Armbruster Bethlehem, Pennsylvania