It was my turn to give the invocation at my Rotary Club-Victoria Harbourside. I would like to share what I said with you:
“Before deciding what to say, I thought about my week and what stood out for me. Two things stood out. The first was last week’s speaker, Mandy Farmer, CEO of Accent Inns who talked about service in the workplace. I thought a lot about how to apply what I learned from her at my workplace. But I also thought: Wouldn’t our world be a better place if we gave others more of our attention, affection and admiration?
The second is rather trivial. I make these healthy, gluten free brownies. Right now, I am not eating chocolate but the instructors at our gym heard about them from my wife and asked me to make them some. I wasn’t there when the brownies were passed around but as I’m leaving the gym later on, the person at the desk, cupped the phone for a second and shouted, “awesome brownies.” It makes me smile days later. If I had eaten the brownies, I would have experienced pleasure for a few minutes but giving them away gave me on-going happiness. It was a simple reminder that there is more happiness in helping others than in helping ourselves.
As we gather this morning in the fellowship of Rotary, let us each in our own way be thankful for good friends, good food, interesting speakers and the opportunity to find happiness in service above self. “
-Murray Tough is a Rotarian in Victoria BC and the co-founder of Serenity Home Care.