The prize of service

Society progresses by engaging in giving rather than being engaged in getting. In getting we are selling our capabilities for price that is measured in monetary gain. This is done not with the purpose of giving our services with love but with a motive at the end of fulfilling our egos desires. This is most often tainted with selfishness. Perhaps the one you are working for is also doing that task for his selfish motives of personal gain. Thus this selfishness becomes a chain of selfish motives that encompass a whole community. We are immersed in doing the tasks that we do with the hope of getting a prize at the end of it. What keeps our attention is the prize or the jackpot. The means become secondary in importance. We may fudge or cheat or connive to get a piece of work done all for the gain of the prize. We thus infuse society with this same aura of selfishness and the distrust and suspicion that goes with such actions.

On the other hand service oriented work is infused with compassion and affection. What one seeks in this type of service is the quality of the giving. When the object of the giving which is the benefit to society,  there is another kind of aura that pervades such contexts. The positive aura is a result of it being in the same wavelength of that signified by our creation. Creation and service are imbued with similar auras that form the essence of our human being --love and compassion.

Here too, like in selfish work, there is a chain of actions. Those who engage in selfless work that is service oriented is serving an intermediate activity or seeking to achieve an intermediate objective of a higher service. A community drive towards caring for the old is but one link in a chain of activities that seek to bring compassion into society. One may trace the action links of this chain to promoting more harmonious families which in turn is related to nurturing caring societies. Can we carry that further to say it is to form a caring nation and further on to build a more caring world?

Selfish deeds don't have this aura of converging society but lots about dividing it and there is no harmony in division, only conflict. So, there is no other way to bring in loving kindness into a society without reducing the divisions in it.