The Joys of Volunteering
2025 started off with a decision that I would return to volunteering, which resulted in an incredible year with multiple volunteering organizations.
Volunteering through 2025 brought so much into my life. For instance, it got me outside and into nature, rain or shine. I interacted with people from all over Portland, and regularly met people visiting from all over the world. A typical week of volunteering with various organizations could include over a hundred interactions. The interactions most often started with a simple “good morning” but could extend into long conversations.
The interactions originate from a place where I genuinely feel good about this world and want to care for it. At some level, people understand that volunteering fills me with joy and that I was happy to share that joy with the world. That set the stage for heartfelt interactions; the kinds of interactions that help anchor one within nature, community, and meaning.
During a morning volunteer session, someone asked me about the park and volunteering. I talked about how the park is a sanctuary for native plants and insects, and to in turn, is a sanctuary for people to retreat into a bit of “wild” nature. I talked about how wonderful it had been to invest myself in helping to care for this special place and to help this sanctuary continue into the future at a time when these kinds of peaceful and restorative natural places are especially needed. With that, the person started to cry. They said they felt overwhelmed with the park’s beauty and how much it meant to have a place like this.
We did not know one another, yet we were not strangers at that moment. These kinds of interactions rejuvenate my spirit as they remind me of our ability to connect and to care for one another, and they show me that we can be a positive force within the world. From these kinds of encounters, I feel light and buoyant with a love that I want to share with the world.
My various volunteering activities bring me into nature with fellow volunteers. By spending more time in the natural world and with a community of caring people, I feel life flow through me as I did when I was younger. It flows more freely through all of the new connections. This more freely flow of life unburdens me so that I can see through the world’s challenges and find more and more energy to care for the future; a future that we share with one another. Seeing into a future brightened by connection and love has brought more and more joy into my life.
It is understandable that someone might want to withdraw from the challenges of the world, however, I have found that the more I give of myself to volunteering, to nature, and to something that is beyond my needs and desires, then the closer I feel to my inner and true self. From this place, there’s a vibrancy of life; an infectious joy that fills me and sparks possibility within the world. As my curiosity for the world increases, all points of contact with the world become energized with the delight of discovery.
Struggle within my life and in the world continues, but volunteering has helped me to reframe the world into a place of abundance so that it becomes harder and harder for me to believe that the world is a place of limited resources where we must fight others to get what we want from life. As that belief fades, I feel unburdened from internal pressures to achieve outward success, and in its place, a desire grows to give greater service to the world.
Caring more for the world seems to create a life path made of love, connection, and fellowship. In a similar way, investing more of oneself into the world seems to create a pathway out of loneliness and into community and connection. Together these pathways lead to a shift in one’s mindset from wondering “why the world isn’t giving me what I want?” to imagining “how can I give more to the world?”
This shift makes me think of the saying, “be the love you seek.” With that we are no longer trapped and waiting for the world to give us perfect love in the hope that it will make us feel whole and happy, but are instead proactively creating love within and around ourselves through our care for the world. By caring for the world, we help to fill the world with love, and we can then feel that love flow between ourselves and the world.
This is a part of the human experience that has been known to us through the ages. It is well-documented yet feels like a secrete as I needed to relearn it in 2025 through returning to volunteering, through writing this posting, and again and again through each day’s interactions out in the world. Volunteering has profoundly positive impacts on ourselves and the world that surrounds us, yet it is something anyone can do at any time by simply walking out the door or reaching out to someone to ask “how can I help?”
For 2026 I decided to lean into volunteering work and sustainability efforts through my business SVALT. An aspect of this will be going beyond my comfort zone of face-to-face and one-on-one interactions, to do more outreach like this posting.
When I wrote this I was speaking to my past self, the old me that had so many reasons why I couldn’t find the time to volunteer. I was also speaking to the part of myself that feels like I don’t have something of value to contribute to the world; the part of me that believes I don’t deserve to belong within a supportive and loving community; the part that can’t imagine me being a part of this beautiful world. That part might always remain within me, but volunteering is one of the ways that voice softens into a gentle reminder to appreciate this life with all of its opportunities to connect with the world and all of its people and natural wonders.
I wanted to share this on New Year’s Day 2026 with the chance that it could also speak to others with similar feelings that might hold them back from volunteering. I hope that this post will help more people see volunteering in a different way; a way that moves volunteering from a category of “work” that people want to avoid doing and into a category of “fun” that people are excited to do as a rewarding and life-affirming activity.
And if someone wants to volunteer, then one of the beauties of volunteering is that organizations tend to be open to most everyone, plus a person doesn’t even need an organization as they can simply go out on their own or with friends and family to pick up trash while on a walk, help a neighbor with a project, help to connect someone with services they need, or do a variety of things to care for and support their community.
Over the last year I have realized that almost any activity a person enjoys is likely to have an associated organization with volunteering opportunities. Another secret to volunteering is that one typically gets a richer experience when volunteering as compared to attending an event or activity as a guest or as a paying customer. In some cases, volunteering provides access to experiences that a person might otherwise never have access to.
Here’s where I volunteer in case someone wants to volunteer there or find something similar in their local community. I have had the pleasure of getting to know most everyone in these organizations that manage volunteers and other community outreach aspects. They are all wonderful people running amazing organizations, so I highly recommend seeking them out.
- Hoyt Arboretum
- Forest Park Conservancy
- Portland Parks and Recreation
- Neighborhood trash cleanup.
January 1, 2026 by Chad Kirkpatrick
