The Greatest Thing I Ever Learned

I started volunteering at my local nursing home when I was 10 years old, but I wasn’t always sure why. I’d grown up with the expectation that you do good things so others see you as a good person, but doing good deeds didn’t always convince me that I was good enough.

My mother and I began by visiting my uncle there. But then we started going every week to give non-medical help to the other residents, like distributing pillows and cookies.

At first, I felt like an extension of my mother there. But once I discovered how friendly everyone was, I began to venture from my mother’s side and got to know some of the residents on my own. Mary was one of my favorites.

“Where’s my poodle channel?” Mary asked in a raspy voice. She pointed the remote at the TV high on the wall, her glasses sliding down her nose. “I used to have a beautiful poodle when I was younger. Oh! She was the cutest thing.” 

“What was her name?” 

“Bells.”  

The following week, I brought cookies up to Mary’s room. Mary, focused on the dog show on TV, gave me a quick hello and signaled for me to sit beside her. “You see the cut on that poodle? Immaculate! That was just like Bells.” 

I asked Mary, “You grew up in Brooklyn, right? My mom grew up downtown and was always scared of the big dogs that ran up and down her block.” 

“Bells was always scared of big dogs in the park. I would yell at them, ‘Not my poodle!’” 

Chatting with Mary and the others gave me a break from my anxiety and my lifelong worry about not living authentically or being good enough. I regularly questioned my motives and beat myself up, especially in new situations. You only began volunteering because of your mom. Would you have even done this without her? 

But I couldn’t show my turmoil in the nursing home; I had to smile in those interactions. At first that was a facade masking my self-doubt, but as I built connections with the residents separate from my mother, my smiles became real. With Mary and the others, I was just talking, not working, not proving I was good. I still felt good about doing a kind act, but I was also enjoying the conversations.

“Never Too Old”

Then, when I was 13, the pandemic hit. I missed my friends, extended family, and my dance studio. I missed Mary and others at the nursing home. I googled Online Volunteer Nursing Home and found DOROT, a nonprofit that sets up online workshops to connect teens and seniors. I immediately signed up.

Our first Zoom included about 30 individuals of different genders and races, maybe a few more teens than elders. Each member introduced themselves, and then we broke into smaller groups. My breakout room was me, Bernice, Todd, and A.A. 

Bernice spoke first, and described her grandson. She clearly loved to talk and loved her family. Her soft blue eyes and gray braids reminded me of Mary from the home.

Todd, a boy who was on his high school debate team, spoke next. Then, with one minute left in our breakout room, a wrinkled Hispanic man in a yellow cable-knit sweater spoke. His Zoom background was some writing. 

“Hello future-friends, I’m A.A. I’ve been doing these circles for some time. I love everything: art, jazz, literature, poetry, paintings. You name it.” A.A panned his camera to a painting of a cat holding a saxophone on his living room wall. 

“I like to share different quotes each week, to bring some encouragement as we start. This one is from C.S. Lewis: ‘You are never too old to set a new goal or dream a new dream.’ Applicable to me and Bernice, not maybe too relatable to you two youngins.”

Our breakout room abruptly ended and we were transported to the main group for a closing. 

A.A.’s Life Lessons

Every Tuesday, after my virtual dance class, I eagerly joined the story circle. DOROT provided a haven from the overwhelming world. As an anxious person who wanted to help, I felt helpless trapped at home. A.A. was positive and especially encouraging to me. 

As the weeks continued, A.A and I grew closer. When we’d return from our group of four to the big group to debrief, A.A. and I always referred to something each other had said.

At the start of each meeting, A.A. and I discussed the book we’d each read that week. We also discovered that we shared a background: fathers born in Puerto Rico who came to New York and met our mothers here—A.A.’s parents in the Bronx and mine in Brooklyn.  During our conversations, A.A calmed my anxiousness by sharing his own worries and reminding me that worrying is normal. 

The months progressed and A.A. missed some Zooms. I wondered why, but I felt it must have been personal, and I didn’t like to seem nosy, so I didn’t ask.

Loving the task or the person in front of me frees me from my own harsh judgment of my self-worth.

Then he stopped turning his camera on. A few weeks after that, the discussion topic was “fear.” A.A. turned his camera on and off several times during this Zoom. When his face appeared, he looked tired but stayed upbeat.

His cheerfulness never pressured me to pretend, though, so I admitted, “I fear I’m not living up to who I could be, that I could be doing more, that I’m wasting time in passivity.” 

I have been told I wear my expressions when I’m anxious. On Zoom it was confirmed: I saw my own furrowed eyebrows. I said, “Is everything I do correct? I don’t really know…”

My anguished words lingered in the room. A.A. broke the silence.

“You know, a song I hold dear really changes your perspective. Nature Boy by Nat King Cole.” He began to sing, smiling as if about a sweet memory. “The greatest thing you’ll ever learn/Is to love and give love in return.” 

“Everything I’ve done in this long life of mine has been to love,” A.A. said.  “I pursue love above all, no matter how many tasks are in front of me.”

“What about things you hate?” I responded.

A.A. processed my words in silence, then replied, “Loving is easy, all-the-time, and everywhere. It may not seem like love, but you just gotta love it.”

After we logged off the Zoom, I plopped down on my bed and searched Spotify for Nature Boy. 

Upon my first listen, I was stumped. Not understanding ignited the old cycle of self-conscious, anxious thoughts. I don’t know what this song means; Do I even know what love is or why I do what I do? Did I go to the nursing home and join DOROT to please others? Out of propriety? To reach a goal? Am I even who I say I am?

On my second listen, I pondered the strange enchanted boy who kept pursuing, wandering, and learning. 

What was his motive? What was my motive? 

“To love and be loved in return.” I thought about what A.A. had said and reflected on love as an action. I placed events from my life under the heading “to love”: dance nights with friends and road trips with my family, but also the pressure of schoolwork and unresolved friend disputes. 

A.A., how could I love all of that?

I listened to the song a third time, analyzing each word like I was decrypting an ancient message. 

Maybe A.A. meant that I don’t need to solve everything. He saw how much I worried, that I was always pursuing things beyond me, just as I had been relentlessly searching for something in this song. 

I spent so much mental energy looking for answers to who I am and why I do things. Maybe I should allow myself to simply be instead of doing what was expected of me. Maybe I could focus on appreciating other people and things like A.A. did. 

A Parting Gift

A.A. didn’t return to the Zooms, and I never saw him again.

Nature Boy and A.A.’s advice and all our conversations took on new dimensions.  A.A. seemed to love everyone he came across.

If he could always show love, even when things were rough, I thought, maybe I could try to love it all too, even if I don’t understand it.

Maybe I already was doing that. Speaking to Mary about her poodle; telling A.A about a new book to see him smile; FaceTiming friends during the pandemic: Those were loving actions. It just took A.A.’s song to reveal it to me.

My desire to understand everything inevitably led me to question my motives. But A.A.’s words and the mysterious song helped me relax my self-surveillance and appreciate my connections. When I was simply present with someone, I could be fully immersed in what I do. As A.A. had suggested, I could see tasks and interactions not as tests of my worth but as opportunities for expansion. 

To explore this more, I turned to meditation, and self-help books and podcasts and uncovered the caring part of me buried by negative thoughts. When the world returned to normal after the pandemic, I started high school and tried to approach everything with love—even trigonometric functions. Loving the task or the person in front of me frees me from my own harsh judgment of my self-worth. 

I returned to the nursing home after the pandemic without asking myself why. Mary was no longer at the home, but I carry her and A.A. in my heart, which feels fuller now.