Giving Time as a Gift
Knowing the kind of person I am, I am always eager to say yes to opportunities in learning or gaining new experiences. So when I stumbled upon an article,
Waste-free gift ideas
A blog entry about Zero Waste by Bea Johnson, her blog on Creative waste-free gifts motivated me to rethink about the packaging I buy and its effect on the environment.
http://www.zerowastehome.com/about/bea/ In one of her ideas, she suggested to volunteer your time to a local charity or Church. I thought about the concept of time and how it is the most valuable gift you can give to someone without having to spend any money or use any packaging. It sounds obvious but I realised also that time cannot be found in duplicates of stock on the shelf, time is irreversible and valuable because you can't
exchange or resell the gift. Time is an abstract concept, therefore, when you give someone time over a store bought gift, it somewhat breaks down a barrier of expectation in terms of consumption and superficialness. And by that, I am not saying gifting someone a store-bought gift is a bad thing to do. It is a thoughtful,
considerate and celebratory gesture to give gifts to people, but the way that we measure the superficial when we estimate our worth by the value and expense of the gift we receive.You can make more money, but you cannot make more time. The time you give to someone is a portion of your life that you cannot take back. With this mind, I decided I would like to put myself out of my comfort zone by giving my time to my community. value of the relationship we have with the giver and the receiver can often be arguably
Browsing through online job hunting sites, volunteer work popped into my job listings. Sure, I am happy to help others in need, but never have I really fully grasped a commitment with a charity. Well, in my Primary and Intermediate years I have contributed to raising a few dollars to Starship Hospital and World Vision; but I think now that I am much older, I can offer way more.
Prior to my 9 years of retail experience working as a cashier and cook at a Fish and Chips shop, I decided I could give it a go in retail selling clothes. Literally, if you can survive working at food retail, then any other retail job should come to you like second nature. Handling customers in a high pressure environment with all their queries and requests is not as easy as it seems.
So, after a couple of late nights of scrolling down through voluntary job hunting, I found that the Cancer Society are searching for a retail assistant in their brand new store in Howick, the Cancer Society Pre-loved Boutique. After sending through my application, I got a quick response back the next day to be interviewed by the staff. The interview went great, I got approved so I was immediately scheduled to start next Thursday 9am-12pm. Here it began, in the heart of East Auckland, my first volunteer job. It felt good to work at the Pre-loved Boutique. In my own home, we have bags and bags of old clothing and old furniture we don't use anymore and moved on from. I encouraged my Mom to donate some of our goods to Charity, it just makes sense that these 'goods' are no longer good for us as we have newer and better things over time. It feels like a waste if we hoard the items to ourselves if we don't use it, someone else could be enjoying these. One morning, we received a box of donated bedsheets and dinnerware from the son of a deceased woman. I was a bit taken aback, I knew that all the items in this store have history. But to experience and acknowledge that the box I was carrying has recent death attached to it, made me want to respect and value the items a bit more. It felt like I held a kind of responsibility for caring of her, that I hold some parts of her 'life' with me-that the cup I was holding used to be her enjoying lunch with her family and, that the bedsheets I was carrying used to be on the bed where she cuddled with her grandchildren.
