Sometimes Love is Not Enough

During the Valentine's season, statements of love bombard us from all directions – some of them profound and some of them cheesy.

In the profound category, Oscar Wilde once said, "Who, being loved, is poor?" There's a lot of truth in this statement. Love transcends material wealth and brings true meaning and joy into one's life. With love, people can pursue their best lives and find the strength to overcome many obstacles. But it's also an overly-simple message. While love certainly is critically important, people often need many other things to overcome the "poor" present in their lives. This includes not just financial poverty, but also poverty of hope, or companionship, or job opportunities, or many other non-material things. While it would be wonderful to believe that love alone can overcome all of these challenges, people in serious need usually require something more.

At Volunteers of America, we express our love for others by taking action to help society's most vulnerable people. We house the poor and the homeless, provide treatment to those suffering from addiction or mental illness, and provide an extra helping hand to seniors who have no place else to turn. Love inspires us and becomes the common thread woven into everything we do, but there's also a lot of hard work and expertise involved.

Sometimes the greatest expressions of love come from caring for others who are hard to love. Many of those Volunteers of America serves are people who some caregivers might not be willing or able to help. But true love doesn't always come easy, and we don't turn away when the task seems too difficult.

To learn more about the many ways Volunteers of America helps serve the needs of the nation's most vulnerable people with love and compassion, please visit www.VolunteersofAmerica.org.

Thank you,

Mike King
President/CEO