In the last few weeks, I’ve started asking myself why I spend my time in the ways that I do. Why do I spend hours on Newbury Street and come back feeling broke and guilty? Why do I go to Red Sox game after Red Sox game, only to be disappointed again and again? Why do I spend hours on Facebook when I ought to be studying?
Our time is of such value, and I know that in my life it often feels wasted or misspent. A couple weeks ago, however, I spent gave just a bit of my time to one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
During the week of FYSOP (the First Year Student Outreach Program—learn more at www.bu.edu/csc ) I spent five hours a day at the Living and Recovery Community (LARC), which is housed in the Lemuel Shattuck state hospital in Jamaica Plain. For those five hours a day, myself, my co-staff, and our 12 first year volunteers cleaned, socialized, ate, and talked with the HIV-positive recovering drug and alcohol addicts who live at LARC. We heard their life stories, their hopes, about their children, their fears. I know more about some of those people than I know about my closest friends, after spending a mere 15 hours with them. By the end of the week, they felt like family, and much sobbing ensued as we left. I could see the difference in our group of volunteers—we were deeply impacted by the experience—but also in the people we’d grown so close to. We hadn’t given them money or things; we had only given them our time. Yet that, to them, was the world. We had simply taken the time to get to know them, to open our hearts and minds and become friends.
How can I continue to use my time in such a way that I will feel so fulfilled and blessed as I did during FYSOP? I have a lot of things going on here at BU—five classes this semester, a job, an internship, a sorority, a dance group, I have friends I want to hang out with, books I want to read. I love the things that I do here on campus, but sometimes I’m left feeling happy, not entirely fulfilled. How can I find a way to use my time to bring fulfillment and joy to myself, and to those around me? I don’t think it has to be at LARC. I can listen to my friends, peers, colleagues, even the girl sitting next to me in lecture. I can set aside time in my week to do something for someone else, with no interest for myself.
I hope that this year I will be more conscientious about how I use my time, and that I will learn lessons which will be of use later in life as well.