Reflective Essay: Why I Volunteer At National Honors Society

An example from my life comes from when I participated in National Honors Society through my school during my senior year. This organization required that we had 20 hours of volunteer work and that we also create our own service project at some point throughout the year. This added an abundant amount of extra work to my already packed schedule, so it could be effortless to say that doing all this volunteer work was selfless and against my better interests. I was making my life more difficult as I helped others. However, National Honors Society looks impressive on resumes, and after I would complete a set of volunteer hours, I would feel great about what I had just done. Therefore, this act was, also, a selfish one. Another larger example was the way people reacted to the idea that they could in fact be selfish. They were trying to prove that they are unselfish. Even after others explained that not all selfishness is negative, and that you can still be selfish when helping others. They were not trying to prove that selfishness was not inherent, but that they themselves were not selfish. For example, people would say that if they are praying for someone else, that was unselfish. Then we would ask if praying made them feel better about themselves and less helpless when someone is in need. Every time, they would say that in a minute way it triggered positive

Therefore, any action that makes one feel good about themselves is inherently selfish because their subconscious motivated them to chase these feelings. From these Baconian observations of the way people act, and dissections of three different levels of society and their motivations for what they do, my belief that selfishness is a part of human nature stays