Serving the Muse

There are many good arguments for volunteer work in any walk of life. It's recommended for career changers who want to experience a new industry, for the underemployed to beef up the resume and to learn new skills. There's the obvious do-gooder aspect to any kind of volunteer work and while I agree it's good to help any worthy cause, that's not what I'm talking about. Volunteering is an elegant and efficient method for expanding our own prosperity.

We can so easily get a little locked into ourselves - not just artists, but anyone. And any artist will tell you we don't necessarily do it deliberately. It can happen simply because it's big challenge for artists is to hold their own vision on a daily basis in the face of opposition. Volunteering increases our community of like-minded people and gives us a wider circle to hold intention with us. And a wider community increases our own prosperity as well - we can't establish prosperity in a vacuum.

Anyone familiar with prosperity practice knows that another big rule is that we can only receive what we are willing to give. Supporting another's dream through volunteering creates support for our own. To help a theatre group with their shows creates audience for ours. To go in as a volunteer is to make someone else's work a priority for the time you are there, an offering of time rather than money. There is a healing quality to this, an antidote to the tendancy to see so much of life as an exchange. It's a form of surrending, surrendering the immediate gratification of a paycheck to see a deeper result manifest in our lives.

I've volunteered a few times this year at The Actors' Shakespeare Project. They honor the plays as Shakespeare wrote them while exploring their relevance to the modern audience. I love their work - they did Midsummer Night's Dream a few weeks ago and are opening this week with Othello. I show up for a few hours and do what ever they need me to do, things I've done on any number of "B" jobs. I'm more than happy to offer these administrative skills in service of the muse. This is a group I admire and respect, one that resonates with my own passion for Shakespeare. I'm just grateful they took me on as a volunteer, just to be around their work -- beyond that they always make me feel so appreciated, I carry that feeling along with me into the rest of my life. I'm also looking at my (non-theatre) skills with more of a sense of value, because they've been "offered to the muse."

I think the most valuable lesson I've learned as a volunteer is about surrender. Surrender new ways of doing things, new priorities. Ideas that are not one's own. Trying on a different method. As a director and theatre teacher, it is too easy to hook into wanting to be in control all the time. Surrendering to another's lead shows me different points of view, making me a better leader as well. It keeps me flexible.