“I cannot do everything, but I can do something. And I will
not let what I cannot do interfere with what I can do.” – Edward Everett Hale
What do you find yourself thinking about most of the time?
If you’re like most of us, chances are it goes something like this: If you’re
in your 20s, you’re probably very concerned about what other people think about
you. If you’re in your 30s, you’re less sensitive about what others think about
you, but if you’re in or past your 40s, you have finally realized that nobody
was thinking about you in the first place because, the fact is, we think about
ourselves 99 percent of the time. That’s not a criticism, it just is. It’s in
our nature.
Yet there are times, for some more than others, that we’re
able to see things from another’s point of view to feel what they feel. That
ability to empathize with others is also part of our nature. Empathy is the
foundation of what makes us capable of helping others and of finding solutions
for their problems. Our capacity for empathy is largely responsible for our
ability or inability to take good thoughts and turn them into great actions.
In this, our 125th year of Mercy in the Springfield
Communities, we have set a goal to collectively demonstrate our capacity for
empathy. Our goal is to provide 125,000 hours of volunteerism in our community.
With 10,000 co-workers, each one of us needs to provide 12.5 hours over the
course of the next year to achieve that goal. It’s certainly a worthy goal and
no doubt will help our communities in significant ways. Let me give you just
one example of how that contribution can make a difference.
Today in Greene County, we have just over 285,000 people. Of
those, 18.7 percent or 53,000 are living below poverty level. Their annual
household income is less than $10,000. They make hard choices between paying
for food, medical care and utilities. This is the population served by Ozarks
Food Harvest (OFH). In a typical week, OFH serves meals to 30,000 individuals
in 10,000 different households. Across the entire Ozarks region, OFH annually
provides free meals to more than 261,000 needy individuals. Those are
staggering numbers – large enough to begin feeling like we can’t do everything
- that the problems are too big for one organization, let alone one person, to
make a difference even with 125,000 volunteer hours. In those moments, it’s
easy to slip back into the part of our nature that thinks of ourselves first.
If it’s not affecting us, it’s not our problem, and the easiest thing to do is
nothing.
Now let me tell you about a group of individuals in our
community who have decided that nothing is not an acceptable answer. Through a
program of OFH, dozens of individuals from around our community have come out
to my family’s farm near Rogersville and donated hundreds of hours over the
last 18 months to grow food in our raised beds and high tunnel greenhouses. All
the food they raise goes directly to OFH to help feed thousands of needy
people. These volunteers have come from Texas, Oklahoma and all over the Ozarks
region to plant, weed, clear, harvest, water and fertilize. It’s hard work, but
I promise that you’ve never seen a group of happier people in your life. They
simply love knowing that their time and labor is helping someone who needs to
eat. They’re showing empathy in its most basic and beautiful form. They’re
doing something.
And yet, the problem is still immense. Last year, OFH
volunteers grew nearly 6,000 pounds of food on our farm. It’s one of many
efforts OFH makes on an ongoing basis to meet those huge needs. Clearly, OFH
and their volunteers cannot do everything, but they’re doing something, and if
all of us can do something, then together we can accomplish anything.
