Service is the Only Safe Addiction

“As we lose ourselves in the service of others, we discover our own lives and our own happiness.” -Dieter F. Uctdorf

I was 16, standing in my high school cafeteria when a light bulb went on. Fellow students were chatting, eating lunch, intermingling, and bustling about. I knew a lot of these people…some fairly well, some hardly at all. I had been quietly observing them. When you are an ambivert and it’s “shy season” this comes naturally.

 In my juvenile, apprentice-in-the-art-of-caring way, I cared about these people.

I knew that some were already struggling with addictions, eating disorders, and crises of self-esteem. I knew others who seemed especially susceptible to these things. I knew addictions, disorders, and crises of self-esteem were all connected.

I wondered that day if there was anything “out there” that a person could get addicted to that was safe, and positive. I am a big fan of healthy eating and exercise, but even those can lead to orthorexia and exercise addiction, if pushed too far.

I recall furrowing my brow and narrowing my eyes in concentration. There had to be something…then it popped into my mind: service. I had a quiet feeling that this was my answer. I pondered. It was true that helping others could be done repeatedly, without igniting depressing cravings. And, there were no side effects from helping people: no regrettable words or actions, no memory lapses, no hangovers, no letdowns, no self-disappointment. 

Instead, service left you feeling authentically great about yourself. It wasn’t fake, it didn’t turn around and bite you. It was challenging in the best way. It left you better than you found it. Most addictions leave people empty and unsatisfied, yet craving more. On the other hand, service fills life to the brim with satisfaction and delicious, unpretended feelings of meaning and self-worth. 

To riff on Batman, service isn’t the addiction society thinks it wants, but it’s the one it needs. 

Service comes with a few caveats, of course. One is that it is an acquired taste. It takes a little while to like it. But if you keep practicing, one day you realize that you don’t just like it, you love it. It’s an addiction, in the best, safest, happiest way. Secondly, a mindset of service requires boundaries. We don’t want codependency. We don’t want to burn out. Even Jesus left everyone sometimes, to be alone, to recharge. Thirdly, service requires wisdom. Service on the wrong mission can be the wrong idea.

In his lifetime, Jesus Christ was not only doing service right, he was doing it perfectly.

His whole life was a powerful sermon on the power of giving. Service was his mindset, his focus, a main r’aison d’etre.  And his example didn’t end with his incomparable gift of giving his life for us. He knew his example would stretch forward, all the way until now, and forward, into perpetuity.

Being service-focused is brilliant on so many levels. On a societal level, the adoption of this mindset lifts communities. Lifted communities lift nations. On an individual level, focusing outward through service rescues people from the disease of self-obsession. In this way, parenting is a built-in immunity builder.

Author David Brooks talks about the “Big Me” that characterizes a lot of society today. It’s the idea that underpins magazines like “Self.” It’s the idea that you are the center of the universe, and happiness comes from constantly filling your own cup, and reminding yourself of your own greatness. Sin is morally relative, and is generally found on the outside, in society. The “Big Me” is self-care on dangerous steroids. Service is an antidote.

Mr. Brooks observed this “road to character” (also the name of one of his terrific books) by witnessing a set of women tutoring immigrants in Frederick, Maryland.

“They radiated a goodness and a patience and a service,” Brooks said. “They weren’t talking about how great they were. They were just — nothing about themselves at all. And I thought, well I’ve achieved more career success than I ever thought I would, but I looked at the inner light they had, and I said, I haven’t achieved that.”

He further said: “… if you live for external achievement, years pass and the deepest parts of you go unexplored and unstructured. You lack a moral vocabulary. It is easy to slip into a self-satisfied moral mediocrity. You grade yourself on a forgiving curve. You figure as long as you are not obviously hurting anybody and people seem to like you, you must be O.K. But you live with an unconscious boredom, separated from the deepest meaning of life and the highest moral joys. Gradually, a humiliating gap opens between your actual self and your desired self, between you and those incandescent souls you sometimes meet.”

Our daughter Theresa was a young teen when she heard about a natural disaster in the Philippines and wanted to help. Her younger sister Jaeden and friends from their dance team were thrilled to join in. They put together a bake sale and then donated the money to the cause.

I have a time-stamped memory of that day. Their laughter and easy banter as they prepared the bake sale items in our kitchen, the joy on their faces as they set it all up at the bottom of our neighborhood, and the wonder and thrill of counting the money they would never use for themselves…it was touching to see. Their eyes were bright and shining.  They were so lusciously happy.  Service is a boomerang of goodness. It comes right back to you.

People with threatening addictions sometimes say they feel like, as the saying goes, they have “a monkey on their back.” But Joseph Smith described something in the opposite direction:

“The nearer we get to our heavenly Father, the more we are disposed to look with compassion on perishing souls; we feel that we want to take them upon our shoulders, and cast their sins behind our backs.”

This is what we want on our backs, the souls of our beloved brothers and sisters. As the beautiful song says:

“The road is long
With many a winding turn
That leads us to who knows where, who knows where
But I’m strong
Strong enough to carry him
He ain’t heavy, he’s my brother… So on we go
His welfare is my concern
No burden is he to bear
We’ll get there…’

We will get there.

We have Jesus Christ, to light and lead our way, past the darkness of deceptive addictions, onto what actually works, and all the way back to our heavenly home.

MaryJo Bell is the author of the Costco bestselling book on building strong families “The Pursuit of Happi-Nest” and the children’s book “I Can Feel it in My Heart”, designed to help children know what to do when they encounter questionable or unsafe media. You can find these books on CedarFort.com and Amazon.