Service

Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Mary Oliver’s question reverberates around my head. I ask it aloud to myself regularly, ever since I watched the film Nyad (not because it was a brilliant movie, but because it hammered Oliver’s words into my skull).

My best answer is: put myself in service.

As a child I attended Church and when I started University my old Vicar used to phone me occasionally and ask, ‘Whose feet have you washed this week?’ I used to scramble to answer, defensive, talking about how busy I was and describing my roles in drama societies and on the university newspaper. My friends expressed horror that I was being called to answer this question at all, deeming it unfair or inappropriate or interfering. But I always sort of welcomed it. It was a fair challenge. The priest was the only person in my life posing the question.

Now, in an age of “Yaas Queen”, “You do you”, and surrounded by therapy-speak of boundaries and self-care I yearn for more of us to ask: whose feet have you washed?

I know many of us feel overwhelmed by life, by the weight of our own problems and responsibilities, and don’t feel we have capacity to dig ourselves out of a hole, let alone help others. Sometimes that’s true. But often by helping others, we help ourselves. We feel less alone. We gain purpose, value, meaning and self-worth from feeling useful.

Before I gave birth to my second child I had the timeless worry: will I love this child as much as my first? People said ‘your heart just expands, love isn’t finite’. And that was true. New relationships expand our capacity for love, extending our circles of care and compassion.

Some of the most rewarding experiences in my life have come through volunteering. When I lived in London, I volunteered with the Red Cross, helping to run a youth club for refugees. Leaving that community was one of the biggest wrenches when I left the capital.

I consider good journalism to be a form of public service. In my work as a journalist, I’ve overcome my own anxieties by thinking of the audience and serving them. I see myself as a conduit to channel their questions, to search for the truth, and sometimes to expose injustices. It’s the key for overcoming self-consciousness, self-doubt, nuerosis, and ‘me-itis’. It’s not about me. And that helps, alot.

Over the last few years I’ve found myself speaking up for my local river. I approach this role with humility. How can I presume to know what the river would say if she could speak? Of course I can’t. She’s an infinitely complex eco-system with unfathomable depths, ebbs and flows. However I can bear witness to the river’s visible degradation, I can call out the causes of pollution, and I can call for better protections so the water can flow clean and clear and so life can flourish in greater abundance once more.

There is something very powerful in acting to protect your local patch of earth and water. I’m trying to play my part in a surging movement of nature guardianship, which is beautifully articulated in a recently-published book called ‘Wild Service’. At this time of climate breakdown and nature loss, it’s easy to feel disempowered by the scale of the crisis. But the authors of Wild Service invite us to take responsibility for our surroundings. We don’t need to own land to care for it. Rather than rely on the stewardship of landowners, or the efforts of nature charities, we can all play a role in connecting with where we live and working to restore it back to health.

Speaking at the Hay Festival last year, Robin Wall-Kimmerer said that everyone has a gift and we “have a responsibility to use it, not just for ourselves, but for all of creation”. She also recommended three principles for living: “We should raise a garden, raise good children, and raise a ruckus”.

I don’t want this to come across as holier-than-thou. I have limits. Sometimes my children are so demanding, I want to scream into a cushion. Service is not servitude. I cherish undisturbed time to myself to read a book or watch a drama. It’s not about being selfless. But overall, most of what I do, I enjoy, and that’s my point. When I put myself in the service of something bigger; be it looking after my kids, helping others, relaying a story, guarding a river - it gives me a sense of fulfilment and joy. When we give gifts, we receive gifts in return.