We’re back with “How Volunteering Gives Adults Meaningful Relationships!”
In the first section on ages birth to twelve, we discussed how having a child dependent on you in any capacity while volunteering can bring happiness, humility, acceptance, and a sense of purpose to your life.
In the second section, we discuss how interacting with children, ages thirteen to eighteen, can develop unique perspectives you may have once forgotten or even blocked out from when you are young. This can teach you to be accepting and compassionate towards others and, simultaneously, comforting the inner teenager in you.
In this section, we discuss how interacting with people, ages 19-25, can teach you to continually learn, grow as a person, and take big risks for greater life satisfaction.
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People in the age range between nineteen to twenty-five are a curious and active bunch. They start to realize what it means to be an active member of society, what it means to have bills for the first time, if they have not had that already, and what it means to be a responsible person.
In order to learn how adults can bond with people of this age in such a manner that brings deep meaning and happiness to your life, it’s important to have a walk in their shoes to understand who they are and why they do the things they do.
Roughly Assessing Their Situation
As in the last section, numerous people in this age range are in some form of schooling. From Doctoral degree programs all the way down to two-year tech. schools, these students range from the top performing valedictorians to students needing to stop studying altogether. There are also people who are not in school at all during this time. They may be working full-time, part-time, or on some form of disability. There are all different types of people this age, doing all different types of things. What we can know, however, is that all of them, on some level, are seeing the world in a much broader and less judgmental way than their younger years.
Many times, people of this age are involved in a lot of different hobbies, clubs, or communities, looking to find their highly-specific niche in the world. These experiences may be more shallow in nature, but not in the derogatory way. They are looking to find what it is they are passionate about. Once they do find their niche, that is when they dive deep and let go of their extraneous interests. They start developing relationships with other people in a more consistent and stable way, keeping friends for much longer than their younger counterparts.
Now that you have a slight understanding of where many of these people are in life and what they are thinking about and doing, you can more accurately see how these people can bring great joy and purpose to your life.
The Joy of Mutual Respect and Understanding
Volunteering with anyone, let alone people of this age group, can be incredibly rewarding.
Volunteering with this age group can provide you with the opportunity to see the world through an adventure-seeking eye. These people are interested in taking their new found depth of independence to heart and are looking for fun, captivating, meaningful, authentic, and fulfilling experiences. Being able to see the world anew from such a bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed perspective can make you grateful for all that you are, or once were, passionate about.
You may assume once more the things that once brought you great pleasure with a rejuvenated energy that may have slowly flickered out of your energy stores. You can learn from their ability to volunteer in a way that is from the perspective of a sponge, soaking up all the knowledge and experiences they can get to find out how impactful they are. You can siphon off some of their energy and passion into your life, providing you with more than you ever expected by simply volunteering.
Volunteering for this age group can show you have powerful it can be to influence people for the good, especially if you slightly older or much older than them. Showing them what it means to be responsible and still have fun and enjoy life can leave you feeling the receiving end of looking at someone as a role model.
Looking for deeper relationships with people overflowing with desires and curiosity to renew you once more? Volunteer for or with this age group.