No money no talk? | Teen Ink

No money no talk?

March 15, 2009
By Anonymous

“No money, no talk” used to by my main theme in life. I did not frequently help people to do anything for free because that didn’t seem fair to me. Also that was just how the society was set up to be, everyone was working to earn money, right? Therefore, I always demanded for some reward after helping to do something. Money would be one of the few motive forces that could get me work. However, my parents always blamed me for having that attitude to the world. Till last year, I had totally changed my whole attitude because of the experience for volunteering.
My school requires all seventh graders to have a minimum of forty community service hours in order to graduate. At first, that just sounded ridiculous to me since I had done nothing like that before. Reluctantly, I went to my local library to sign up for volunteering since that’s the only way worked.

On my first day, a librarian illustrated me different sorts of work that I could help with, which all seemed very boring and tiresome to me. Each day, I brought myself to the library to complete two hours of service unwillingly, hoping to compete the hours as fast as I could. Till one day, I was shelving the messy, untidy children book cases as I usually did on every other day, a lady walked toward me and asked me a question. “Excuse me; where do books that are for kids aged about six locate?” I remembered putting all those little picture books on the yellow shelve at the corner, therefore, I told her where they were at and also showed her a few books that I thought would be pretty interesting to read. We then started to chat and she thanked me for those advices. She also praised me for volunteering at the library because it was always so messy for people to find books. For the first time in my life, I actually felt good to help people. I was really happy to hear those complements, in which someone really appreciated what I did.

The days afterward, I found myself started to enjoy volunteering in the library. Sometimes, people came and asked me questions like where were those fiction books or like did you know if you have this book here. I would do my best to answer their questions, in which I also received many complements that soon became my motive force. Time passed by very quickly and soon I found myself had completed the forty hours service already ;nonetheless, I really enjoyed this volunteering work so I just continued to work till the end of the school year. I even received a trophy for completing over a hundred community service hours.

This volunteering experience erased my whole attitude of “No money, no talk.” I learned that helping people could actually be fun and enjoyable. Most of all, money is not everything. Everyone needs love, which could not be purchased by money, in order to survive in this world. The point is that people really do appreciate when you help them and I really enjoy the process of helping people. Last, I turned volunteering and helping people one of my habits that my parents were really impressed by the changes volunteering had brought me.


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