What vulnerabilities in others awaken my greatest impulse to be of service?

I remember having a vision once that made me cry. I am vegan, and for many years, I participated in a weekly writing workshop near a sandwich shop that made a delicious vegan sub (there might actually have been dairy in the cole slaw, I didn’t want to ask because I liked it so much). I got the sub then ate it in the posh corporate boardroom that we used for our writing workshop. The sub was incredibly messy. I couldn’t eat it without sauce dripping all over, and I felt really out …I remember having a vision once that made me cry. I am vegan, and for many years, I participated in a weekly writing workshop near a sandwich shop that made a delicious vegan sub (there might actually have been dairy in the cole slaw, I didn’t want to ask because I liked it so much). I got the sub then ate it in the posh corporate boardroom that we used for our writing workshop. The sub was incredibly messy. I couldn’t eat it without sauce dripping all over, and I felt really out of place eating it in a very formal boardroom.One Friday night, as I was preparing to go to this workshop, I thought about eating the sub for lunch and had a vision of myself. I was sitting in the boardroom with this sandwich in front of me, and I had cole slaw and crumbs and sauce all over my face, and I had just taken a big bite of the sandwich and had my mouth full of food. But I had a huge grin on my face, the happiest look I could imagine.I genuinely don’t know if I have ever actually smiled that way because experiencing that type of joy requires dropping your cynicism and skepticism, forgetting about anything bad and enjoying just what is right in front of you at the time in the purest possible way. The version of myself in the vision was a simpler person than I am, guileless. And I began to cry because I wanted to bring that level of happiness to others.I have another story. My partner is a teacher, and every year that we have lived together, I’ve gotten them something with an apple to celebrate the first day of school. Sometimes I make an apple crumble. One year, I was out of work and baked a pie from scratch. This year, we were very busy around the start of school, and after the first day, my partner drove to meet me at my office, and we ate dinner together at a grocery store nearby.While I was there, I picked up an apple crumble without my partner noticing. When we got home, I left it out for them in the living room, and the joy they experienced from me keeping up that tradition still takes my breath away.