Volunteering and Depression

Volunteering to any group that serves the community is one suggestion I read that helps combat Depression. I did just that. I volunteered.

Volunteering is not new to me. It was my world back in college when I was the president of the student council. It continued until I graduated and started working at my first job. I even headed a group of volunteers that helped build communities. Helping out, reaching out, and giving my time, resources, and almost all of me was my life. Then it died. That part in me passed away.

It just died. Slowly, I guess. It died without me knowing that it already passed away. I just started feeling aloof to my fellow volunteers. Seeing or working with them was not something I got excited about when before, being with them and working for a GREATER purpose was what fueled me.

Being somehow "anti-social," I later learned, was something usual for people who are Depressed. We would tend to shy away from social gatherings. Things that you used to love doing started feeling bland and so senseless.

Anyway, God is good. I was given the opportunity to volunteer to an organization that is somehow new to me. It's an organization that advocates for providing assistance to public school teachers, principals, and other stakeholders. For a start, I, together with my friends, participated in the Brigada Eskwela - a government initiative that aims to gather Filipinos to help their local public schools by cleaning up the classrooms, painting blackboards, chairs, and tables, beautifying and getting the school prepared for the upcoming June classes of many young Filipinos.

The event reminded me of what I was before - eating at the most unideal place, and getting sweaty and dirty because of too much working building houses. I loved that feeling. I relived it during that moment when I was painting classroom chairs and eating at a not very good place to eat - somewhere stinky and hot.

It was a reality check for me. The entire event where there were public school teachers, parents, pupils, and other volunteers helping out one another to make the school somehow exciting, reminded me that there is so much in the world that has more serious problems than what I am actually experiencing. It humbled me. It grounded me. It reminded me that, outside my dark world is a world that actually reaches out for me and tells me to get out of my dark world and experience light in the midst of a reality filled with chaos, uncertainty, insecurity, and even hopelessness. And in this, find my own light and hope.