Coming home

Column“It’s so nice here, a feeling of coming home,” my phone chirps, an SMS message from someone I helped find a volunteer position. A small yet meaningful sentence.

We all know it. The feeling of coming home. After a vacation, when you’re back in your own house, smelling how your house smells again. A dear friend you haven’t seen in a long time and with whom you just pick up where you left off. A group of friends where you’re always welcome, no matter how you feel or how you look. Coming home is wealth.

I see many people who have completely lost that feeling. They feel displaced in their own skin. They’ve lost their job, their familiar daily activities, or are dealing with debts, family problems, illnesses. People who become isolated even though they love to chat. People who can’t seem to get anything done anymore, even though they used to create the most beautiful things.

“I was a truck driver, my wife sent me to you, I just sit on the couch, grumble at her and the kids. Her life with me is not what it used to be.”

I work in a happiness industry, a field where we work together to find a volunteer position, a task, a responsibility, a challenge where you feel at home. And you get to choose it yourself! A vibe and a work culture where you feel good, where the people fit you like a glove. Such a tiny message might just be the start of small happiness. Coming home brings out the best in you.

Coming home, there are places that offer that. Beautiful volunteer organizations with noble goals, a vision for the future, and solid plans to achieve them, a vision for the people who work there, for the development of the neighborhood, and sometimes even for the world. Where as a new volunteer you can discover who you were and who you are. Where you get a task that suits you, where you join for lunch, receive a compliment, clarity.

These places are looking for ways to maintain and sustain this basic feeling, this work culture. Seeking balance. Sometimes discovering that there are too many displaced individuals working and not enough people present who can create the feeling of coming home.

The demand for volunteers with these skills is rising rapidly. Wanted: Jack of all trades, 1. well-educated, 2. superb communication skills, 3. insight into group processes and work cultures, 4. conflict mediator, 5. implements policies, …

Many highly educated individuals who possess these skills, who want to do volunteer work in a volunteer organization alongside their job, or retirees from the business world, are not always eager to take on these directing, coordinating, culture-defining roles. They want to visit a lonely elderly person, drive a van, get their hands dirty in a community garden, or sell ice cream in a cafeteria. Just to be busy with your hands and heart, to come home for a while.

And where are the Jacks of all trades? They are everywhere in the city, shaping their own ideals and ideas in cooperatives, incubators, in communities or in neighborhoods with like-minded people. Not because it’s required or necessary according to governments, but because they themselves believe it’s necessary. Then people work like a charm, late into the night, to come home very tired and very satisfied. Coming home brings out the best in you.

Nettie Sterrenburg

organizational consultant | process facilitator | inspiration coach | trainer