<p>Mike, I have to strongly disagree with you. Here are two examples: like Kluge, I did my time on my homeowner’s board too. Thankless, uninteresting, excrutiating, boring task and I never want to do it again. But the HOA serves the community very well as a functioning body - for one thing, the community as a whole ends up paying a LOT less for services and insurance, which in turn puts extra money back into the budgets of the residents, and, SOMEONE has to serve on the board. </p>
<p>In another example, I taught CCD school every Tuesday night for an entire year. I think I hated that more than serving on the HOA board. But the 15 or so students in my class benefitted a great deal, as did the church, who did not have to pay anyone to teach the class. </p>
<p>In both examples, I very much fit your example of “inexperienced, incompetent, and unmotivated”. But still people were helped and served. Even I was helped - I learned I’m not cut out for teaching, and I certainly learned to run like h*** in the other direction when HOA election time rolls around. So where’s the logic in your assertion? </p>
<p>Everyone - regardless of level of experience or competency - can do something to help someone else, or several someone elses. It doesn’t have to be a a huge, headline winning project or anything spectacular - even little things can mean a great deal to another person. </p>
<p>I was in New York a few weeks ago, and tried to use the subway system. Being directionally impaired in the first place, and not having any clue how to get anywhere in New York, I was having some difficulty making any sense at all out of the maps and posted instructions. This 20-something native stepped up and not only explained to me how to get where I was trying to go, but, seeing my sustaining confusion, gave up and simply announced he would escort me personally. And so he did - there we were, me dressed for the boardroom in an expensive suit, pumps, carrying a briefcase, and him in his gang attire, complete with pierced nose and tatoos. He escorted me right to the very building of my destination - a trip that took 40 minutes from where we started. </p>
<p>In another example, I was flying out of Newark the other night, and my flight was hopelessly delayed. Another passenger sitting in the gate area with the rest of us was desperate to get on the plane - she had been in the airport since early in the morning, and was on her fourth attempt to board a flight on standby. It wasn’t her fault that she missed her first flight - she was at the airport two hours before departure but Continental’s check-in kiosks malfunctioned, causing massive lines, and so she missed her first flight, and thus began a long day of trying to go standby on one flight after another, and not quite making it. Continental’s service was apathetic; the standby list was still very long owing to a cancelled flight earlier, and this was the last flight out. A native New Yorker heard this, stood up, took the woman to the counter, and insisted on giving up her seat, saying, “I can just catch some flight tomorrow or the next day - I don’t need to get on a plane that badly tonight - I’ll just catch the train back to Manhattan tonight; I can stay with my aunt, and reschedule my trip for tomorrow or the next day”. So that is what they did. There was some resistance at the gate counter so the offerer began to issue commands and use some very loud, specific diction in the manner that I suspect is unique to New Yorkers, and so finally the gate people had to do as she demanded. The woman who was the recipient of this kindness was overcome and started to cry and couldn’t stop crying even after the plane was in the air. </p>
<p>So you see Mike, even very little things - stuff that never makes headlines or wins awards - can make a huge difference to someone else.</p>
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