The Pleasure of Serving

All nature yearns to serve.
The cloud serves, the wind serves and so does the burrow.

Where there is a tree to be planted, plant it yourself;
where there is an error to be corrected,
put it right yourself; where an effort is required
that everybody else shuns, make it yourself.

Be the one who removes a stone from the road,
hatred from among the hearts
and the difficulties of a problem.

There is the joy of being healthy
and that of being just; but above all,
there’s the immense joy of serving.

How sad this world would be
if everything in it were already done,
if there wasn’t a rose to be planted,
an enterprise to be started.

Do not react only to easy challenges;
it is beautiful to do what others avoid doing.

But do not make the error of believing
that only big jobs count;
there are small services that are good services,
like embellishing a table, putting books in order
or combing a child’s hair.

There is one who criticizes, another who destroys.
Be yourself the one who serves.
Serving is not limited to inferior beings.
God, who gives us the fruit and the light, serves.
He might be called: The Server.

And He has his eyes fixed on our hands
and asks us daily: Did you serve today?
Whom? A tree, a friend, your mother?

Gabriela Mistral
Chilean Poetess
Nobel Prize 1945