Creating Meaning in the World

Creating Meaning in the World Bydonating & Giving Free Service to Others

Today's information-oriented society has created a psyche among people that they need to know everything and anything that concerns or may concern their everyday lives. Even the most trivial information is considered essential if this information will alleviate the worry or concern that people have whenever they feel that they are not "in the know." Indeed, awareness is the key towards understanding or creating meaning in a world where there are too many concerns and challenges that people face everyday.

The development of awareness about an issue brings about the desire to take action to the information received. An example would be an individual taking action by donating relief goods and offering free welfare services once s/he have received or been informed about a local area that was devastated due to a natural disaster. This example is a common kind of situation associated between awareness and taking action on it by giving service to other people.

Indeed, the relationship between awareness and taking action by giving service to other people is demonstrated by numerous researches and studies in the field of social sciences (Schoenberg and Ravdal, 2000). These studies have found that most people associate awareness as a pre-requisite or catalyst towards the accomplishment of providing service to people. Action, meanwhile, is found to be almost always related to the provision of service and help to other people. Social research illustrates that awareness and action by providing social service to people are best demonstrated and elicited by providing people/informants with vignettes or hypothetical stories and situations that they can best identify or are familiar with. The use of familiar, yet hypothetical situations though vignettes shows how awareness and action is equated with service towards people.

Beyond the awareness level, service to people also means being able to relate to others -- that is, the individual is able to empathize with the situation other people are in or the feelings and thoughts that they have concerning their situation. Although it is not entirely imperative to be able to empathize at all times, we as helpers of others must, in order to be of service, be able to understand other people's realities. Thus, more than awareness, there must also be a conscious effort to understand other people. It is only through understanding other people's realities that we will be able to create meaning in our lives: the things that we want and do not want to have for ourselves, the situations that we want and do not want to experience. By helping and being of service to others, we are able to identify and differentiate our selves with and against others, respectively.