Volunteering, in fact, is a seed. It is nourished by love. It grows in the hearts and then spreads to others.

What is volunteering? How does it arise inside a person? Does one's personality provoke that feeling? Does it come to life by faith? Or is it an outcome of the thought, the emotion? Is it a habit that can be acquired, or learned? And, who can be called a volunteer? Is one born as a volunteer, or does one become a volunteer?

Such questions lead to a slight pause in people before answering. The reason may be hidden in the most known definition of volunteering. In accordance with that definition, volunteering is when individuals, without expecting a financial return or acquiring any self-interest, attempt to benefit of other people, society, nature or all other creatures. And it is that when done by sincere desire. The thing that causes the hesitation while thinking about the definition of volunteering, what pushes us out of our known boundaries, is the absence of expectancy. It is the reason that, in return for what is done, a tangible benefit is not acquired for the self or the others. Here there is something game-changing. Why would someone turn towards the things that are for the benefit of society, nature, and other creatures, putting aside the self and their environment? How does that desire based on free will and coming from the inside arise? 

Maybe the volunteering term will find its foundation when people volunteer to define it. This article is an attempt for that purpose. For a moment, let us imagine that humans have two bodies. One is physical, and the other is spiritual. And then, let us assume that those two bodies consist of lots of holders. The holders in which our physical hunger and needs will be met; the egoic holders that will be filled with what we want to become and fulfil; the holders in which our inward needs and spirituality will be satisfied... We may add more to these.

And there are bigger, larger holders that hold these. These are such cups that they make you an individual with everything and everyone in the world.

Moreover, while these holders unify you with other people, they also integrate themselves with the holders of others.

 And eventually, that bigger and larger holder obtains a body for itself. Volunteering resembles one of those inclusive, holistic, embodied holders. The cells of that body, whose boundaries are removed, are formed by the hearts of people that have reached the feeling of being "us" and can see others, society, nature, and other creatures from a holistic perspective.

Volunteering, in fact, is a seed. It is nourished by love. It grows in the hearts and then spreads to others. It has no age, gender, country, or borders; it resembles a web trying to enlarge rapidly until wrapping whole humanity. It is the strongest cement in the world. It is what connects the "me" to "us," "us" to the whole, the whole to humanity, nature and the universe. That cement makes the one, who has the heart, the messenger of the whole.

Volunteering takes a person on an inner journey with their own will. We set foot in places that we haven't been before, and learn new things that we didn't know about ourselves and others. Volunteering is to create new fields for life, and with those new fields, to hope that life will be renewed and broadened. Life is to be a breath at the times of breathlessness, to carry fresh blood to where the pulse slows. Being a volunteer means expanding the time. It is to make sound and hopeful beginnings for the future in order to end the sufferings that one inherited from the past during their adventure on earth.

One becomes many after the moment of accepting themselves as a volunteer. Following the moment of becoming a volunteer, the things that one will strive for are pointed out and those who have followed this sign join them and become a volunteer like them. The increase in volunteering and the number of volunteers strengthens the belief that life is for experiencing and the world is for living. Volunteering acquires its reality that connects us to the universe, and that reality transforms "me" into "us," and encapsulates nature and all creatures. To be a part of that body or to make volunteering one of our bodies depends on our free -or rather, liberated- will.