Matthew Smith
September 11th, 2013
Love Thy Neighbor
One
of the best ways to see and connect to the world around us is through
service. From helping a neighbor carry
their groceries upstairs, to volunteering at a homeless shelter in your free
time, no matter how substantial the act it helps us to connect to the people
around us. I’ve performed several acts
of service throughout my years of education, and while it may not be the most
significant of them all, my favorite has to be volunteering my time at the
annual sixth grade retreat. The goal of
this retreat is to bring together the entire sixth grade class as one with a
weekend in the woods of learning, teambuilding, and bonding. It is this idea of bringing everyone together
as neighbors, and to embrace the unknown not to fear it, that is the underlying
theme of these poems and a Jesuit education.
In
Mending Wall by Robert Frost, we get
a first hand account of two neighbors different points of view. First off, the narrator see’s no reason to
re-build the fence, as “here there are no cows” to wall out he says. Because of this he simply believes the fence
is a barrier to keep him and his neighbor distant. In fact it seems as if they only interaction
they have is the once a year they come together in order to build this
separator between them. His neighbor
however takes the viewpoint that “good fences make good neighbors”, meaning
that by just keeping out of each others affairs there won’t be any
conflict. This is the opposite idea of
service of any type, where the main objective is to tear fences down and unite
people of all types. In a sense by
performing service we are trying to all become neighbors of some sort, and by
“tearing down the fences” between us we can all become closer.
The
next poem, Learning to Read by
Frances E. W. Harper is the story of an elderly man who is just learning to
read. Even though everyone around him
says there is no point, he continues because he no longer wants to be
uneducated. This poem shows us how much
people value education, even something that seems simple to us like learning to
read. It shows us that no matter how
old, or even young, someone is there is no reason to discriminate against him
or her for trying to further their knowledge.
Age is simply a number. Some
schools might not trust a 16-year-old high school student to be responsible for
a group of young children, but I was so grateful to be given the
opportunity. If we are not given the
tools and opportunity to learn and grow, then we never will. That is another aspect of service, which I
enjoy, taking what I have and trying to help others use it to benefit their own
lives.
The
final poem was actually the one I enjoyed and understood the most. It contains two characters that get into a
car accident, and before even glancing at the damage they immediately start
yelling profanities at one another. Upon
looking however, there is no damage to be seen.
These two people where so angry about what they assumed had happened
that they didn’t take a second to relax and realize everything was just
fine. Going into a new school as a sixth
grader can be just as terrifying, and if these kids aren’t given a chance to
just relax and get to know each other it going to be a much tougher time than
is necessary. Sometimes it’s really just
the unknown that scares us the most, but once we take a step back to examine
it, it’s really not that scary at all.
It
is the Jesuit tradition here at Loyola that really pushes the idea of service
more than a typical University. After
reading a speech by Fr. Peter-Hans Kolvenbach, it really helped to put into
perspective the goals and ideals of a Jesuit University. One quote that stuck out to me was by Saint
Ignatius who wanted “love to be expressed not only in words but also in deeds.” This quote is really a great one-sentence summary
of what service is. Jesuits seek to
educate “the whole person” both inside the classroom with book knowledge, but
also outside with real world knowledge. I
have already had and enjoyed these sorts of experiences, and look forward to
those that are in my future.
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