MLK Jr Day: Time to embrace duty to serve

In any given year, there are very few occasions to talk about volunteerism, about the “duty to serve”. These are topics that should be truly embedded in our lives and should be seen as one of the main focuses of our daily conversations.

Considering the staggering and mounting problems societies around the world are facing, it is not an exaggeration to imagine citizens to be driven by their own lives’ goals but also engaged in the pursuit of the common good.

As idyllic as it might sound, it should not be unthinkable to foster a sense of community belonging in which volunteering and serving others become a natural thing to do, a sort of duty that is not a burden but a personal relief that gives people joy and satisfaction.

Instead, there is a dearth of celebrations for a “holistic giving culture”, barring a few exceptions like the International Volunteer Day (Dec 5) and the Nelson Mandela International Day (July 18).

July 18 is another call for action to remember the contributions of Mandela, the father of modern, free and democratic South Africa often referred to as Madiba—his clan name.

There is another special occasion that is normally celebrated only in the USA on the third Monday of each January: Martin Luther King Day or MLK Day. Martin Luther King Jr was the quintessential icon of the civil rights movement, who fought against segregation and a racial system that basically was a form of apartheid. Both Madiba and Martin Luther King Jr picked tough battles against political systems at a very high personal cost.

These were against apparently insurmountable roadblocks, structures of power which, by design, were alienating and discriminating against large parts of populations living in their respective nations that, in both cases, happened to be people of color.

Madiba initially had chosen to take a violent path against the white supremacist regime of South Africa but years and years of detention made him understand that the only way forward was peace obtained through dialogue and reconciliation.

Martin Luther King Jr instead was crystal clear from the outset about the changes he and with him, many others, were envisioning for a different, more just and truly united America, could materialize only through nonviolent civil disobedience. Driven by his Christian faith, King Jr said, on 19 Aug 1967, in Atlanta, “power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

In one of his most important public addresses titled ‘Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution’, delivered at Morehouse College Commencement, on 31 March 1968, King Jr shared: “It is no longer a choice, my friends, between violence and nonviolence. It is either nonviolence or nonexistence”.

“Nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral questions of our time; the need for mankind to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to oppression and violence. Mankind must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love,” he said during his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance address on 10 Dec 1964, in Oslo.

King Jr knew deeply that nonviolence and peaceful resistance were the only methods which could have resulted in a better, more human nation.

Violence would have brought only more blood and with it, an unending cycle of revenges and retribution. King Jr invested in building a real organized movement because creating a more equal society was not just his job. Rather, it was a collective effort of a myriad of citizens, including numerous white Americans, who stood for justice and against bigotism, racism and hatred.

King Jr and many others, who even laid their lives for the societal changes they were envisioning, had realized that those changes could only materialize with a dedication at building people’s skills, starting with principles and values-based leadership.

There are many definitions of leadership but to me what counts the most is that leadership starts with personal endeavors, with a personal commitment at trying to be better not just for self-improvement but also for the enhancement of the society.

One of the most famous quotes of King Jr that has been one of the central messages of MLK Day since its initial nationwide observance in 1986 was: Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.

To serve others, you need to be driven by unassailable and universal principles and values and by doing something for others, you will always end up learning something, enhancing your leadership capabilities.

“You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace, a soul generated by love,” is another nugget of wisdom from King Jr.

It is indeed paramount to think about embedding our society with a culture of service, a culture of helping each other.

The concept of “duty to serve” could be imagined as a call for action in which people are neither compelled nor obligated to help others but make a personal choice to dedicate some of their time, skills and energies to the society.

State agencies in Nepal and elsewhere should facilitate and make it possible for citizens from all walks of lives to be involved and be engaged in public lives, driven not by a spirit of self-interest but by altruistic aims. Volunteerism, unfortunately, is too often discounted and neglected. Nepal is also a striking example and itself a contradiction.

The country has high social capital but state agencies are not doing enough to capitalize on it. By the way, what happened to the draft National Volunteering Policy that was supposed to be endorsed years ago?

With or without such a policy, it is never late to talk about volunteerism and service and it is never a lost cause to talk about ways to promote them.

MLK Day is a federal holiday in the USA; it should be embraced universally.

And let’s not forget that we cannot avoid talking about key and inalienable rights when we talk about volunteerism.

Certainly, you can also volunteer in authoritarian regimes and many of these nations do promote volunteering and yet, theirs is just a very convenient and disingenuous approach.

Because what’s the point of genuinely serving others if you do not have freedoms and your rights are not respected?

That’s what King Jr fought for, let’s not forget it.