February 8, 2010
It’s nearly Valentine’s Day, one of the biggest Hallmark holidays of the year. It’s the time we set aside to recognize and acknowledge our loving feelings for one another.
We can express romantic love or we can create a more loving bond with friends and co-workers. Often, and especially if we have guests on board, we can plan an event that showcases the holiday, complete with all of the usual frills: flowers, cards, chocolates and gifts featuring a rosy, plump, heart-shaped design.
Where does this heart-shaped symbol come from? There is a tendency to associate the heart with feelings and passion. Aristotle claimed that the heart is the center of all emotion, and many of us would agree. Our heart beats faster when we are excited. And when we are heartbroken we feel heaviness in the center of the chest.
But for us stews, the heart has a special significance because we either have it or we don’t: the service heart, the love of service.
It’s hard to define what this means because it’s more about how it feels. It’s that warm, fuzzy feeling we get when we know that something we’ve done has touched the heart of others. It’s the “wow factor” when the guests are blown away by our table decorations and the fabulous meal the chef has created. It’s the acknowledgement you get for sending care through your heart, and it’s palpable. The mood changes, and very often the whole vibration in the room changes, too.
In service, there is always a giver and a receiver. The power lies in the core belief that this exchange of energy is important. It requires sincerity and integrity, and believe me, it really matters in the grand scheme of things.
It’s been said that the best way to find yourself is to lose yourself in service to others (Mahatma Gandhi). To truly find our best selves, we must be open to the process of giving and receiving; it’s an important life lesson. When we leave the yachting world, the discipline and the knowledge we have gained are tools that we will take with us to build the foundation of our new life. Along with identifying our dreams and visions, the lessons of service may teach us everything we need to know about life.
The lessons of service teach us about each other and ourselves as we figure out what we care about and what we can’t stand in each other. It is a reflection of chaos, both within ourselves and within the planet we live on. Somewhere along the line we are forced to develop tolerance and some level of understanding. In a perfect world we may come to love those very attributes that we once hated in another — although frequently not until long after they have moved on and away from our life. By opening our eyes and our minds, these lessons teach us that our service hearts can expand to fill the universe.
I like to say that one year on a yacht is like nine years on land. We usually don’t go home after work every day to decompress and so we have to learn to get along. Sometimes, we are subjected to power plays and manipulation at the hands of our co-workers. The close proximity of the physical environment we live in can seem suffocating.
One of the greatest lessons we must learn is that, inevitably, there comes a time when we must make the conscious effort to simply get over it. It can help us to remember that often the very things that drive us absolutely crazy about others are common attributes we share; it’s just that we don’t really appreciate the mirror that others present to us.
At the essence of who we are, humans are a tribal community. We share a group identity and group experiences. The level of service we give to each other dictates our activities. The lesson here is that if we do not learn how to give and receive as a group, we will not survive.
True progress encourages the heart and soul of service. It is the hallmark of greatness.
This Valentine’s Day, in the spirit of authentic service, let’s learn to fill our hearts with grace, our souls with love, and allow our own service hearts to evolve. In the words of Albert Einstein, “Try not to become a man of success, but rather try to become a man of value.”
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