Volunteerism Can Be Easy, Social, and Fun
Touching grass (and other things) with friends for a good cause
Wife and firstborn are on a road trip and secondborn is asleep upstairs, so I am going to try to crank this out today and get back on the blogging bandwagon. After writing the first post of my Building YIMBYs of NoVA series about burnout, I realized about a month ago I was myself pretty burned out, so I have been taking it easy. I marvel at folks who have been doing land use advocacy on their own time and dime for many years, even decades. We are all indebted to them. Which is a good segueue…
How do we change the world? Reforming land use to make it more dynamic, equitable, and efficient is a daunting task. Failure is absolutely on the table, and it can be easy to feel overwhelmed. Same for climate change, certainly, and a host of other serious issues. Twitter is not real life, but I do think it epitomizes a certain pattern of behavior: You care about something, you want to make a difference, but you are not sure how. So you end up frustrated and angry, letting outbursts at people you disagree with serve as a substitute for what you know in your heart would be more productive action. But the question remains, what should you do? How do we change the world?
That is admittedly a bit harsh, maybe even judgmental, but my message this week is that something is better than nothing, especially if you are just getting started. And I was encouraged by a recent one-off volunteer experience, because it was even more fun and energizing than I expected. Picking up garbage with friendly people is a fine way to socialize, it turns out.
The Saturday before Memorial Day, I e-biked over to South Four Mile Run in South Arlington to help members of a various local civics groups clean up the stream and surrounding area. I am proud to say many YIMBYs answered the call, including our hardworking Arlington VP Grace White, ensuring the event’s success. I saw a friend from Arlington Young Democrats and a few young Republicans were supposed to join, not sure if they did, but the point is that all were welcome to contribute.
I enjoyed the event but I felt a need to lead by example, and so I really appreciated my pregnant wife staying home with our two young kids. (As those of you in civic life know, spouses often get the short end of the stick.) Most attendees were probably in their mid to late twenties, prime age for this sort of thing. And that gets to one of my bigger observations: Many young adults in particular are struggling for a sense of meaning, struggling to make friends after college or high school, and sometimes just struggling to get out into the world for a reason other than work. Rather than viewing leisure as entirely hedonistic—brunch, a ballgame, drinks, standup paddleboarding, goat yoga, whatever—volunteering in your local community seems to be an underexploited path for making connections, striking up friendships, meeting a romantic partner, and cultivating a sense of community for yourself. Something with a purpose bigger than yourself scratches an itch inaccessible to even the finest mimosa or most sparkling moment out on the water. (My son just woke up so I will wrap this up.) A superyacht cannot give you the warm and fuzzies.
The cleanup checked a lot of boxes for me. It was outdoors, it involved scrambling on rocks, there was even a little bit of teamwork. I joked that people pay good money to turn their ankles in places like this. Instead we ended up giving six dollars we found to a homeless gentleman. This points to the perils and limitations of this attitude. There is certainly a danger of morally lionizing yourself for picking up some trash in a park as you debrief with your buddies over beers at a nearby bar. But that little event was fun, wholesome, and worthwhile. We did not fix the world, but we did change it a little, for the better. We all have devised so many worse ways to spend free time. So if you find yourself in a funk (not the good, musical kind), maybe check out Meetup or Facebook events or just text a friend. Find a reason to touch grass, together.
Have a great weekend, however you plan to spend it.
If you enjoy this blog or want to work together, I would love to hear from you at lucagattonicelli@substack.com. I am more than glad to answer questions from readers. And totally open to suggestions of topics to write about! Visit my grassroots pro-housing organization YIMBYs of Northern Virginia at yimbysofnova.org.