Serve Others First

I’m writing this, as usual, at 10pm.

I’ve moved through different daily habits of writing, because the habits change as the needs of your life change. Right now, I don’t find a time to write before the very end of my day. Sometimes I regret it, because I’ve spent my day doing my work on as many fronts as I can, and I’m pretty unreliable when it comes to being coherent.

But my core animating principle, for decades, has been: serve others first. I can’t write till it’s quiet at the end of the day because before now, I’ve been working hard to serve others. My family, my students, my community, my colleagues. I view everything I do, whether paid or volunteer, as a chance for service. Serve others first.

I write here, too, as an act of service to my community, but also as a selfish act of self-service. Over ten years of daily writing, I have gotten better and better at distilling my own worldview; that’s why this act of service comes at the end, because it’s for me.

Balancing self care with the desire to serve others can be difficult; I don’t pretend to be better at it than anyone else. But so long as I feel healthy and able, I feel that serve others first is as good an animating principle as you can find.