Three years ago, I quit my job, and with free time joined a training course for volunteers at a psychological guidance organization. I wanted to take hold of an opportunity to serve society, and I also thought I could make some new friends there, so that I wouldn't be too lonely without work. I didn't expect that the experience would change my life.

That last remark sounds like an exaggeration, but in truth when I look back on who I was three years ago, it seems as if I am remembering a different life altogether, so different do I seem now. At various times friends have made similar observations about how much I have changed.

I believe the root of the change lies in my basic nature being affected by a tenet of psychological guidance: "Before serving others, get your own house in order"-which means first aim at personal growth and only then talk about service.

And I would grow in the course of my work at this center. The center has provided many worthwhile courses on professional psychological counseling, which are definitely important sources for growth. As far as I am concerned, the most valuable thing I have encountered there is the people.

The power of compassion

Most of the center's volunteers are housewives, primarily middle-aged women who only began to have the time to volunteer after their children were in school. With long-term exposure to them, not only has their abundant life experience served to guide me in my life, but their characters and personalities, tempered by their many days in this world, have served to encourage and compensate me.

For instance, in my group training for empathy development, one of my fellow trainees was a school teacher who has two children of her own off at college. From all of her experience as a wife, mother and teacher, every move she makes has long been exceedingly considerate and refined, and full of empathy. In the group she was a living model of what we were studying. From her I saw for the first time the power of compassion, and under her influence I would lose much of my anger and pigheadedness.

When we were play-acting in another training course, I would enjoy the tremendous maternal love of these older friends. Once, I was playing the lead character and acted out a memory of lonely adolescence. In the drama I sobbed and wailed, and at its end, some dozen-odd mothers swarmed around me and held me in their embraces, allowing me to feel a warmth I had never known before. The next day, before the group was going to break up, the group leader gave us some time to select a partner, and to express our concern and love in our own way. A classmate with whom I had no previous contact approached me as if I was a small child and repeatedly stroked my forehead and cheek, causing me to lose all resolve, fall into her large embrace and sob at her bosom. From this experience we built a broad and deep friendship, and became very close friends.

Perhaps because my mother and I are 35 years apart in age, and I am a middle child among many siblings, I had few opportunities to get close to her growing up. My only older sister was a full eight years older than me, and she married very young, and so we too had very little time together. Compensating for what I lacked in childhood, these fellow volunteers and companions often formed relationships with me in which they served as surrogate mothers or older sisters.

The contact that left the deepest impression on me was with one friend who has a delicate character and physique, and is in this respect quite similar to my mother. Most coincidentally, her daughter's personality was strong and independent, like mine. After meeting and enjoying each other's company a few times, we discovered that each of us on our own had begun regarding the other as a surrogate mother or daughter. Afterwards, we began to exchange even more questions and observations about our actual mother- daughter relationships, which allowed me to better understand my mother and allowed her to better understand her daughter, causing a turn for the better in those relationships.

Reassessing life

These experiences combined with the center's body-and-mind integration workshop and courses on psychological play- acting and music therapy made me feel as if I had been born again and was growing anew, from infancy through childhood and adolescence-it was as if I went through the entire process all over again.

Everyone says the generation of Taiwanese now about 30 are lucky, blessed by economic development and social affluence. From a material standpoint, we are indeed lucky, but from a psychological standpoint, we grew up during Taiwan's period of greatest change, when political, social and even family structures were disintegrating, when value systems were confused. These changes caused many frustrations, and often left us feeling lost and powerless, not knowing how, in this messed-up age, to peacefully stake out a life for ourselves.

In reassessing my life, I was able to dispel many oppressive feelings, and I gained a better understanding of myself and of how to relate to others, making me feel as if my whole person was more stable and not, as before, plagued by inexplicable bursts of emotion. Certain influences from the outside or the mundane world were made clearer, allowing me to honestly reflect upon my own needs. This must be what is meant by "being oneself!"

In other volunteers who became friends I saw similar changes. A computer engineer told me that he had never been involved in a romantic relationship, and so when he enrolled in the empathy development course and tried to understand other people's emotions, he often had a "feeling of not being able to feel." Only then did he realize how empty his relationships had been for 20 or 30 years. After several years of volunteer training, he became a very sensitive person.

Other friends of mine have engaged in similar kinds of service work after experiencing the dark clouds of a failed marriage, or the anger or terror experienced when a loved one dies. They then went on to find themselves and establish an independent identity in life.

The truth is that serving others as a volunteer has also given me much in return. My main work at the center has involved taking on psychological counseling cases, and serving as a group leader of empathy and self-affirmation groups, and emotional management groups for single-parent elementary school students. Accompanying people through their low times and sharing life experiences with them is a hard-to-come-by opportunity in this age when people lack ties to others.

Nevertheless, there are great pressures in work such as this that helps others. It requires truly professional skills; without them one won't really be able to help other people. For this reason, the center has established evaluation systems to ascertain the quality of our service. With pressure thus from within and without, we are forced to continually study and improve.

This hasn't fazed me, but changes in my career have posed more of a problem. For instance, since I returned to my career, I have lacked the time and energy I used to have to throw into my volunteer work. Although I don't want to stop volunteering at the center, if I don't put in the hours required, I will be asked to stop working there.

Perhaps the course of a life is like this. When you pick something up, you've got to put something else down. Fortunately, volunteer social work is booming, and if I want to do such work in the future, it will be easy to find an opportunity.

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Starting as strangers and ending up close friends, volunteers form long-term relationships. In the process life grows fuller.

(photo by Vincent Chang)