by Michelle Nunn, CEO, Points of Light Institute
One Christmas season, my father took me with him to meet a young boy and his family who were visiting Washington for the holidays. But this family was visiting for a very special reason – they were fulfilling the Last Wish of the young boy who had cancer.
He wanted to visit the Capitol and meet his Senator and experience the beauty and majesty of Washington.
You can imagine that visiting with that young boy, just a few years younger than I was, made quite an impression upon me.
Fifteen years later I was at a leadership retreat at Camp Twin Lakes in Georgia, a camp that serves children with cancer and other illnesses.
As I walked through the cafeteria line for dinner, a young staffer helping in the kitchen approached me.
He asked me if I remembered meeting a boy in Washington many years earlier who was making a trip to Washington for his Last Wish.
I wondered how anyone would know about that visit, but, I said, yes, I did remember.
He asked me a few more questions and then he said,
“I was that young boy that you met who was fulfilling my last wish. I beat all the odds, survived my cancer, and I am now a counselor serving other children with cancer.”
For me this story evokes the power of service–its ripple effects, its unexpected returns, and the circle that joins people together–those serving and those being served in a continuing cycle of giving and receiving.
We live in a world of self-help, but the most profound and fundamental way to help ourselves lies in our ability to reach out and help others – to extend beyond our own needs to support those around us.