Is Rotary for Old People?

Several weeks ago I walked into a retail store in SE Portland owned by two attractive and sophisticated 30-something women. I was visiting on behalf of my rotary club and handed them a printed invitation to join us for lunch. We chatted for a while about their business and about Rotary, and when one of them asked, "Isn't Rotary for Old People?" I found myself laughing in spite of myself.

"Listen," I said. "None of us are getting any younger, and yes, some of us are further along in years than others, but rotary is for anyone who cares about the kinds of values that Rotary promotes." I explained that Rotary grew out of the desire of its founder, Paul Harris, to establish amidst the corruption, unrest, and moral and ethical ambiguities of turn-of-the-century (20th Century) Chicago, relationships with people he could trust. Paul Harris was raised by his grandparents in a small town in Vermont, where people looked out for one another. Not surprisingly, many of the earliest Rotarians had in common a yearning for the values that one would have been exposed to growing up in a small town or an agrarian community--values based on a respect for and appreciation of the interdependence of life.

And make no mistake: interdependence in life is the rule and not the exception. This is true whether we're looking at life through a microscope or, say from a spacecraft orbiting the earth.

There is ample scientific evidence to suggest, for example, that mitochondria, the organelles in animal cells responsible for converting oxygen and food into the energy that powers all of life's vital processes, are descendants of bacteria that were just hanging out in the primordial ooze millions of years ago. So way back when, some of these bacteria got gobbled up as food by other cells. Although the gobblers were unable to digest the gobbled, the gobblers were able--figuratively speaking--to make lemonade from lemons. After getting over the heartburn, it must have become apparent to the gobblers at some point that there was a tremendous advantage in living symbiotically with the gobbled: energy! Lots and lots of it--energy to grow differentiated colonies of cells that could take on highly specialized functions and make possible ever more complex forms of life.

The chloroplasts found in the cells of the green things of this world had similar humble beginnings as bacteria that developed a symbiotic relationship with a host cell, allowing the host cell to convert carbon dioxide and water to food and oxygen.

Take a more expansive view of this, and you see symbiosis taking place on a grander scale: the green things of this world convert the waste products of animal life into something useful, and vice versa. Step back far enough from all this and we recognize that the earth itself is an incomprehensibly large and vastly complex organism.

The imperative at work here, of course, is survival. The unique role that humans play in all this is that we are capable, as fully conscious beings, of behaving in ways that maximize the survival potential of all of life and the physical universe as well. Perhaps this is a grandiose statement, but to me, that's what Rotary is about. The four-way test teaches us to ask ourselves, "of the things we think, say, or do, 1) is it the truth, 2) is it fair to all concerned? 3) will it build good will and better friendships? and 4) will it be beneficial to all concerned?

So, in the end, Rotary is for anyone--irregardless of age--who cares enough about behaving in ways that promote the greatest common good. In the near future, I hope some of  the SE Portland Rotary Club members make contributions to the blog to describe our club's efforts to make a positive impact on our community and the world.