Making Ourselves Useful

The good we can do—with what we already have.

Could somebody use this?

I have been thinking about that question lately.

Maybe because I reached a stage in life when I had something I once desperately wanted:

Time.

A little too much of it, apparently. 😂

My sister regularly suggested that I might consider using some of that time to get up and walk.

Another friend had a different complaint: after years of working, building things, solving problems and accumulating experience, wasn’t it rather a waste to do absolutely nothing with it?

I had a perfectly reasonable response.

I had become sinfully lazy. 😂

And frankly, I had earned some of it.

But somewhere along the way, another thought crept in.

I didn’t particularly want another career.

I wasn’t looking for another impressive title.

I certainly wasn’t looking for another full-time job.

I simply thought…

Maybe I could still be useful.

And that turns out to be a surprisingly interesting way to look at this chapter of life.

Because usefulness doesn’t have to look like ambition.

It doesn’t have to mean running something.

It doesn’t even have to be particularly grand.

Sometimes one person brings an idea.

Another brings enthusiasm.

Someone else brings experience.

Another brings connections.

Someone shows up with food.

Someone knows how to get things done.

And before anyone quite realizes what happened, all those little pieces begin fitting together.

I’ve seen that happen.

It makes me wonder how many good things never begin simply because we’re waiting for the person who has everything.

Perhaps that person doesn’t exist.

Perhaps that’s the point.

What have you got?

Time?

Experience?

A useful skill?

An old laptop?

A garden?

A recipe worth teaching someone?

A spare afternoon?

A telephone number that could connect two people?

An idea nobody has tried yet?

Or simply enough patience to sit beside someone who needs company?

Maybe that’s where public service really begins.

Not with becoming extraordinary.

But with ordinary people deciding that whatever they already have might be useful somewhere.

Look around …… What have you got that somebody else could use?