The Joy of Service

I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy.

Rabindranath Tagore

“According to cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman, winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in economics (link from Quartz ), happiness is fleeting while satisfaction lasts. “The key here is memory. Satisfaction is retrospective. Happiness occurs in real time… Memory is enduring. Feelings pass.” A study published in the National Library of Medicine that tracked a pool of participants over 50 concluded that “continuous volunteers reported greater subsequent life satisfaction than former volunteers and continuous nonvolunteers 4 years later, when we adjusted for their baseline life satisfaction.” So, not only is chicken soup good for the soul, so is helping people. That’s wonderful.

About the author

Rabindranath Tagore (/rəˈbɪndrənɑːt tæˈɡɔːr/; Bengali: রবীন্দ্রনাথ ঠাকুর pronounced [rɔˈbindɾɔnatʰ ˈʈʰakuɾ]; 7 May 1861 – 7 August 1941) was a Bengali polymath who worked as a poet, writer, playwright, composer, philosopher, social reformer and painter. He reshaped Bengali literature and music as well as Indian art with Contextual Modernism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Author of the “profoundly sensitive, fresh and beautiful” poetry of Gitanjali, he became in 1913 the first non-European and the first lyricist to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. Tagore’s poetic songs were viewed as spiritual and mercurial; however, his “elegant prose and magical poetry” remain largely unknown outside Bengal. He was a fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society. Referred to as “the Bard of Bengal”, Tagore was known by sobriquets: Gurudeb, Kobiguru, Biswokobi.