I am trying to raise my kids to think more about the world than their next playdate, TV show or snack. Recently a friend decided to host her 40^th birthday party at a food distribution warehouse for the hungry. My first thought was, I’d rather take my friend out for a drink to toast her birthday, but I knew this was a nice thing to do. I thought about bringing a gift for her but I will do that another time. Little did I realize, I was the one to receive the real gift.

It was a Sunday morning on a beautiful day. My kids wanted to swim, sleep, watch TV… anything but go to the food warehouse. Through some serious and exhausting negotiation, I was able to encourage my oldest child to go with me.

In the warehouse, there are lots of smiling volunteers handing out cans and boxes of food to other volunteers holding boxes. Once the boxes are filled, they are closed and given to volunteers to distribute locally. I heard the requests over the loudspeaker to come and sign up for a route to deliver boxes to the elderly. My son and I hadn’t planned on delivering boxes. The boxes are a little heavy and, well, he’d rather be swimming. Frankly, so would I. But we decided that these boxes needed to be delivered and so we stepped up to get our list and directions to the address building where we would be delivering food.

When we arrived, we saw lots of people in the apartment building going out for the day and receiving Sunday visitors. What surprised me was that I drive by this building a few times a week. I never knew that there were hungry people living there. But there are. And the people in the building look just like my parents, aunts and uncles. Retired, happy. But some of them don’t have enough food to eat. I realized that one day that person without enough food to eat could be me. Or it could be you.

I dutifully delivered the boxes and suddenly wished I could do more. I thought about how lucky I am that I don’t worry at the grocery store about whether there will be enough money to pay for the food. It certainly puts life in perspective. And last night, I slept better than I would have, had I just gone swimming all day. Once again, by giving, I ended up receiving so much more through an increased level of appreciation for all that I have.

In Judaism, there is a concept of tikkun olam—repair the world. It happens that the organization that coordinated the food distribution is the Jewish Relief Agency based in Philadelphia. The organization distributes food once a month throughout the Philadelphia area. Many of the hungry folks are immigrants but some are not. Many are Jewish but some are not.

In this crazy time of graduations, camp and vacations, repairing the world is important to remember. It also helps us repair a little of ourselves!