Family expresses gratitude through volunteering
October 11, 2008
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Stuart Laidlaw
FAITH AND ETHICS REPORTER
Cleaning feces, needles and discarded crack pipes from a basement washroom early one Saturday morning, Danny Torchia had a revelation about just how lucky he is – and has been grateful ever since.
"That hour cleaning the floor brought me more joy than anything at the office," says Torchia, head of a successful Toronto public relations firm that bears his name.
"This was a categorical never-going-back revelation for me."
That was almost five years ago and, every winter since, the 32-year-old and his wife, Antonia Aristizabal, have been volunteering with the Out of the Cold program, in which churches invite in the homeless on cold nights.
The two work the 6:30 a.m. shift and, on arrival, Torchia grabs his mop and heads straight for the men's room.
"It can be pretty disgusting," he says. "But these people have nothing else."
Ulrich Schimmack, a psychology professor at the University of Toronto, says people like Torchia are the face of modern gratitude.
With successful careers and plenty of material possessions, they are increasingly aware of how lucky they are and now want a way to give back as a means of giving thanks.
"Now that we have all the things we want, we are looking for what else we can get."
Schimmack, who studies what makes people happy, has discovered something that many might consider common sense: If we have the things we want from life, we will be happy.
To achieve that, he says, we have two choices, change the things we want, or change our lives.
For the past 100 years, as industrialization brought new prosperity to the West, the focus has been on changing lives.
"To a certain extent, it has worked," Schimmack says.
"If I show you two maps and one is a map of GDP (gross domestic product) per person and the other is a map of happiness, you would be hard pressed to tell the difference.
"The two are very similar."
More recently, he says, many in the West have begun to put more emphasis on changing their preferences as they look for more meaning in their lives.
"There are a lot of things that money can't buy," Schimmack says.
That's the realization Torchia came to in that basement washroom.
For a time, he thought the best way to give back for all the good things in his life – his wife, his 3-month-old son, Emmanuel, his thriving business, his friends, his church – would be some grand gesture, such as quitting his job and moving to Africa for a year to work with orphans or AIDS patients.
But then he looked around as he walked from his downtown condominium to his Spadina Ave. office and realized there was much work to be done here, as well.
"In many respects, people in a modern, vibrant, capitalist-driven society like Toronto need more help than they do sometimes in a small village in a developing country," says Torchia, a member of St. Michael's Catholic Cathedral.
"It's possible to do mission-type work right here in Toronto."
So, rather than doing one big thing, Torchia decided to pitch in whenever and wherever volunteers were needed in the city, including helping with a soup kitchen and teaching Sunday school.
For the public relations man, whose job it is to broadcast others' activities to the world, solace came in the anonymity of volunteerism.
"I try to never say no to anyone who needs help," says Torchia.
He feels strongly that he has done absolutely nothing to deserve the things in life he treasures most, so considers his volunteering a way to earn them – or, as he puts it, "to let my conscience rest."
Immersed every day in the hustle and bustle of the business world, Torchia says he sees many people through his work who could benefit from doing more volunteering and focusing less on getting ahead in the world.
"Sometimes, we get lost in the quest for material things," he says, "and forget what matters."
Email: living@thestar.ca
Toronto Star