Ending with the Passion of the Spark by Marianna

Ending with the Passion of the Spark by Marianna - January 2017 Scholarship Essay

Giving of time can electrify and mend the heart. This ingrained jump start can serve as the true definition in what it is to give your time. The act of volunteering is general in comparison to the recoiled raw emotion that is received from those who accept an act of kindness, which for me has triggered a natural addiction to search for the next. Although my first has lead to my second act the volunteer juice has begun to race through my veins with a momentum that fills the heart instantly like the rushing water of a broken dam.

I wish this quest to volunteer was self inflicted, but credit can’t be taken for that. My very first volunteering opportunity came as I was a tag along during Christmas as an elf with my parents. We stuffed boxes with food for the homeless. It was within the first few minutes when my eyes began to swell as the realization was much too strong. I was not wrapping a present; I was helping people survive. As small as my contribution was it was done with a compassionate tear. A volunteer that had given much more of her time approached me and could see I was touched. She gave me a hug and said thank you as she looked through my eyes and straight down that tunnel to my heart.

Although the giving of food was not for her, I all of a sudden realized that my contribution this day had a reverb that I never saw coming. I never meet who actually received the food I had packed this day. What I gave this day to others in the room was so strong I don’t know if I could have handled actually giving the food to those who really needed it. A room in my heart had opened and was being filled with a love I had not known. How was this door locked all these years? I needed to find a way to keep it open.

As a full time student athlete I was having problems finding organized events directly after Christmas. I needed to do something so with no funds I did the only thing I knew I could do. I went to pick up trash in safe area in which others did not pick it up. I went downtown and began to pick up trash in a grocery bag. Within the first hour a homeless man approached me. My initial thought was that I had no money to give this man. Without words he reached out and placed some trash in my bag, winked and walked away in his hunched decrepit body without saying a word. Maybe he had received the food I packed that day and he was unknowingly returning the gesture.

I stood as still as a nail in a piece of wood. That room in my heart became flooded again but this time the room was painted with vibrant colors of emotion that I had not known to exist. As this man walked away in which he came I noticed he had passed a garbage can. A tear fell and I walked away littering the walkway with happiness.

Marianna Scine