It’s All About Serving Others, or is it?

“Serving others” seems to be the buzz word lately.

Let’s take a good look at serving. The definition, serve, has several meanings that can pertain to legal, military, slavery, religion or food. But the above phrase requires a different set of definitions to choose from like; to work for, to be a servant, wait on, to supply goods and services, to be of assistance to or promote interests of, to meet the requirements of and to act in a specific capacity.

Now let’s look at it from a different point of view.  According to the book, Invest in Joy, there essentially are only two word forms, love based or fear based.  When you listen to them and allow yourself to feel the emotion each word gives you it’s fairly easy to identify which category a word falls under.

Fear based words are words like depressed, discouraged, insecure, arrogant, lame, sick, and temper to name a few. Now contrast that with love based words like praise, happy, pleased, grateful, fun and joy.

 

The question then becomes where does the word “serve” fit in?

It fits under a love based word.  Think of all the parents out there doting on their children. When you take a good look at the pros and cons of parenting you would wonder why anyone would want to do it. Seriously, who would want to spend so much time, energy and money on such a venture when by all accounts you get so little return on your investment? It certainly isn’t money. No. It’s much stronger than that.

People choose to become parents because they find joy in helping the child grow – serving him.  Serving is a form of love. Therefore it’s not all about “serving others”. The translation really means “It’s all about loving others”.  Kind of gives you a warm fuzzy feeling, doesn’t it?