Serving:
What it means

When we look in a dictionary, we find this definition:
serve:
to work for.
However, I think that there is a deeper meaning to the word "serve." To serve is not just to work for, but to, in the words or Martin Luther King, Jr., "condescend to the depths of human need." I think that true service is when we help those around us and don't expect anything in return. Service is sacrificing your time and labor only wanting it to help someone.

Dr. King knew what it meant to serve. In his book, The Measure of a Man, Dr. King states: "An individual has not started living until he can rise above the narrow confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity." This says that we need to lay down our selfishness and look around us to see the needs that are much, much more important than our own.

Dr. King also goes on to tell us that service affects everyone by saying "As long as there is poverty in the world I can never be rich, even if I have a billion dollars...This is the way our world is made. No individual or nation can stand out boasting of being independent. We are interdependent." This is what service truly is: the knowledge that there is need in humanity, that we are part of humanity, and that it is needed that we help humanity and then, in knowing all of this, acting upon it and helping humanity without expecting anything in return.