Six Types of Volunteers We Don’t Want at the Kalavan Retreat Center

In our first year of hosting international volunteers at the Kalavan Retreat Center, we've had a number of extremely positive and extremely negative experiences. It's been a very interesting social change for me, personally. Before this experiment began, I was largely socially isolated. Now, I have found myself in a position of social leadership and managing a household, both in terms of its daily resources and operations and the harmony of the makeshift "family" occupying it at any given time. It has done a lot to prepare me for the underappreciated burdens of fatherhood and raising children across all their stages of development. Perhaps this will be the subject of a future book.

Of the people who have come here as volunteers, some have stayed several months and been wonderful, celebrated additions to our micro-community. They found uniquely valuable ways to contribute while they were here, and we all benefited from knowing one another. Yet, many others have been extremely problematic, usually only lasting a very short time here before it became clear they either had expectations that were antithetical to how we operate or they were simply very rude, closed-minded, or even abusive people.

I have now formulated a strict "no losers, no assholes, and no freeloaders" policy, which I inform prospective volunteers of upfront.

• A loser is someone desperate for a type of help we are not prepared to give them – typically someone whose personal life is a catastrophe (whether socially, economically, or otherwise) and is looking to someone in a higher position of authority to solve the lifestyle problems they are clearly not capable of solving on their own.
• An asshole is someone who disregards or disrespects others. They do not consider how their actions affect the people they are sharing a space with, and they should not attempt to enter a co-living situation with strangers.
• A freeloader is someone coming here for the wrong, largely self-serving reasons that fail to take into account what is expected from them. They are only looking to take as much as possible from what we offer in order to maintain a minimalist, lazy state of passive existence while offering as little as possible in return.

I've further broken these general qualities down into six types of applications I've seen in the worst volunteers we had here in 2024:

1. People just looking for a free place to live and free food to eat who don't share our values or want to participate in our vision of community and co-living.

The Kalavan Retreat Center is not an apartment complex, hostel, or college dormitory. We have limited space for volunteers and visitors, so we only want to offer it to those who align with what we care about. This is variant number one of a freeloader. If people come here but basically keep to themselves in their room 90% of the time and don't participate with us as a community, I consider that a waste of space that could be given to someone who would appreciate all aspects of what we offer beyond food and shelter. This is true even if they do a satisfactory job of their work obligations as volunteers.

2. People in desperate circumstances who will agree to anything just to be able to come here.

These are losers whose judgment is compromised because of their desperation. They cannot fairly assess whether the Kalavan Retreat Center would be a good place for them to stay and whether they would be comfortable with the social setting and obligations here. As well, it makes it much more awkward for me as the host if I ever have to ask them to leave because it's not a good fit for us. I do not want to ever be responsible for kicking someone out on the street. Most of the people we've had here, if they ever had to suddenly leave, would be comfortable returning home or going back to traveling like they were before they came here. If someone ever begs to come here or says they will quit their job and give up everything in their life to be here, it's an automatic "no" from me. Same thing with parents struggling to take care of their kids, people deeply in debt, or running from authorities.

Of course, we all go through rough patches in life. Tragedy can strike any of us, and we all need a helping hand sometimes. What matters is if the people asking for help are taking responsibility for the situation they are in and doing everything in their power, however minor, to fix it before asking others to take over their responsibilities for them. If someone's life is such a mess that they think they need me or us to help them set it right, I have to at least see that they are doing everything in their power on their own already to change things instead of assuming we are in a position to come down and fix things for them like some kind of benevolent deity. Everyone who comes here should have established a basic level of autonomy for themselves. We've had many exiles from Iran, for instance, who did not let all the political and economic factors working against them stop them from taking a basic level of control over their own lives. They remained self-determined. It's also very telling if someone seems already willing to project their personal problems onto us while at the same time begging for our assistance.

3. People who have to be micromanaged and monitored closely to make sure they are fulfilling their work obligations in a reasonable fashion instead of just coasting by on the bare minimum. 

In my mind, these kinds of people are more like teenagers than adults. They aren't quite ready to decide who they want to be and what they want to do, so they need a proper adult there to continually guide them with superior volition. This is another type of freeloader. Perhaps this is the first time they've ever lived away from mommy and daddy and are thus expecting me to fill that role for them, which is not a position I ever want to have to enter again for people who haven't developed the capacity to make their own choices and act on their initiative. As an adult in my thirties, I find myself often stuck in an awkward position toward those in their twenties. Sometimes I can treat them like peers, and sometimes I am forced to treat them like children. It's made me reflect on how I will treat my own children someday if they grow up to have no ambition or initiative in life. These people minimize themselves to be as small as possible instead of learning and growing through their experiences here. They ignore opportunities to learn valuable skills from experienced practitioners because their only goal is to make life as easy as possible for themselves. Even if they ultimately end up doing the work that's required of them, it will only be done in a begrudging manner, which is not fair to me as the host or the other volunteers they work with.

If you come here agreeing to contribute a certain amount and standard of work, no one should have to remind you to keep that agreement. If you don't know how you can best contribute, ask us. If you have a problem with the type of work we are currently focusing on and asked for your assistance with, let us know and then suggest another way you would prefer to contribute. If you have skills, find a productive way to employ them. If you don't have skills, keep your mind open and start learning from the other people around you. There is plenty of value to contribute that requires very little physical or intellectual ability so long as the effort and the will are present. Some of our volunteers have been the type of people who would rather sit around waiting for something easy and unskilled to do instead of taking advantage of the opportunity to learn from skilled experts how to do a variety of new types of tasks, including carpentry, plumbing, metalworking, various arts and crafts, or cooking. We want open-minded and ambitious people who seek to grow as capable individuals, not those who are content to reduce themselves to their lowest operating state.

We recently hosted someone who had been kicked out of their home and claimed they had not had a bed to sleep in for two nights in the middle of winter. They reached out to us, desperate for somewhere to stay for a little while. I sympathized with their situation and told them we could host them for a week but that they would be treated like any other volunteer and expected to work while they were here. The first day was fine, but seemingly every other day after that required me to constantly remind them that there were various projects going on that could use their help. They seemed to resent the fact that I was "forcing" them to do something they didn't want to do. They spent most of their free time on their phone in their bed. When they left, they asked me if they could come back sometime in the future. I didn't know how to explain to them that I didn't want to deal again with someone who couldn't be responsible for managing themselves and keep their own agreements with someone who helped them out when they were in need. This man was a bad combination of both a freeloader and a loser.

4. The opposite: people who insist on micromanaging others.

These are assholes through and through. Even if I have appointed you to a position of leadership here due to your expertise or seniority, you have to know what boundaries not to overstep with other people. I'm amazed at how many people so far have shown up in my house and, from day one, assumed it was appropriate to start ordering others around (including even me, the host) without even taking a day to observe how we do things here or check if their authority would be welcome. They will usually insist that we start doing things the way they are used to doing things in their home country simply because it's the way they are used to doing them and, therefore, must be the best, ignoring our intentional and explicit blend of people and practices from many cultures in our little melting pot.

These people do not last very long, as they usually get very offended that no one is eager to drop what they are doing and bend to their will. Maybe they will have better luck as hosts on their own property someday, with their own underlings to manage.

One man was quite perturbed to find me up and active early in the morning with a cup of coffee in hand, beginning my morning ritual of walking around my own house in silent contemplation, insisting that there was something wrong with me for acting that way in my own house where I was not hurting anyone. Others took serious offense at how much recreational time I spent silently reading alone. One insisted it was unacceptable for cats and dogs to be allowed on the furniture, even though our website and social media are full of pictures showing them behaving in such ways, and we go out of our way to inform people of the situation with our numerous pets in case they have any reason not to want to live with animals. All these people were pretty severe assholes. They went out of their way to travel to a remote location in a foreign and try to impose their standards on people who never indicated they wanted such treatment. 

5. People who are not observant of and adaptable to the norms and established culture here, whether explicitly expressed or not.

You probably wouldn't believe me if I described some of the things new guests have arrogantly assumed it would be okay to do here. Some people have repeatedly entered into private spaces without knocking or asking permission. Some girls decided they wanted to walk around the house naked without asking anyone else they were sharing the space with if they'd be okay with that. We suspect that they actually came here with the intention of seducing the men in the house into casual sex and were just broadly advertising their availability for this. One of our early female volunteers slept with a male volunteer shortly after arriving here and then immediately stopped talking to him, hurting him deeply and creating an awkward situation for everyone in the house. She remained blissfully unaware that she had done anything wrong.

Some women have come here with the intention of seducing me, despite knowing virtually nothing about me besides the fact that I am an American passport holder and a homeowner. After they left (without me reciprocating their romantic attention in the slightest), they started passing the word on to others with similar intentions who might have better luck with me. For a while, I had to screen volunteer applicants based on who they had heard about The Kalavan Retreat Center from and if their attitude would change once they found out I had a girlfriend. These women were losers of the highest order. They did not come here for the right reasons, such as to grow as individuals and to have a mutually beneficial social experience. They were looking to manipulate others into solving all their problems for them.

One man, who was in charge of lunch one day, decided he didn't want to bother preparing a vegetarian variant of the meal for our vegetarian guests and suggested we just hide the fact that meat was in the food and hope they don't notice. Another woman scolded the same people for being too picky about their diet and insisted that they should just eat whatever is served. When I gave one man permission to open a bottle of my wine and drink some, he became very loud and offended that not everyone else in the house immediately agreed to drink it with him in the middle of the day.

I've never been a particularly neat and tidy person, but I've at least tried to be mindful of how the messes I make might affect the other people around me. I was amazed by how some guests ignored the most basic sense of cleanliness and care for other people's possessions. Some would continue to pile garbage around an overflowing trash can instead of taking it out. Others would leave my guitar and other musical instruments on the floor in the middle of a room, where anyone could step on them, instead of returning them to where they belonged or at least to a somewhat less precarious location.

This is the opposite of people who take it upon themselves to rearrange others' possessions without their permission because it doesn't align with their sense of order, sometimes even throwing other people's things away after repeatedly being told to stop doing so. For a while, any time something went missing, we had to assume one particular guest had decided to hide it away somewhere without bothering to tell anyone that they had moved it. This continued for months after they left, and it became a recurring joke among the long-term guests.

6. People who are not willing to resolve disputes and social strife productively and peacefully.

Usually, so long as I've done my job of curating the right kind of people to cohabitate here, social disputes are kept to a minimum. Still, it is inevitable that some people are going to misunderstand certain things about how they are expected to treat each other. Personal grudges and resentment can build if not managed immediately. I've seen that most people are very willing to sit down like adults and talk about such things as soon as they realize there is something to talk about. However, some others, even with me available to mediate and the support of the group at their disposal, have actively resisted resolution, which created a tense and awkward living situation for everyone in the house. If you come here, you have to be committed to open, honest, and fair communication with everyone else here.

Recently, we had a whole house meeting of about eight people to discuss certain issues that had arisen among everyone, and only one single person repeatedly left that meeting to stay in her room alone while we resolved the issue together, even though we tried numerous times to get her to participate. She left the house soon after that.

Another woman, seemingly based only on previous racist experiences with men who looked a certain way, decided that a certain man staying here was her mortal enemy. She told me numerous times in private that he was a very bad and dirty man and I should kick him out of my house. I asked her to give me a single confirmable example of something offensive or egregious he had done to her to give her this opinion of him. Was he threatening her? Was he sexually propositioning her against her wishes? Was he breaking or stealing things that belonged to her? Was he insulting her? No. Nothing at all like that. She just didn't like him. Nothing I could say or do would change her opinion of him, even though I and everyone else in the house liked him. If I have to kick someone out because of a perceived conflict between two parties, you can be sure it will be the person who is unwilling to resolve it, no matter who did what.

We value individual freedom as one of our highest priorities at the Kalavan Retreat Center. That means we don't ever want to have to force people to act a certain way. With that freedom of choice comes responsibility for the choices we make as individuals. Freedom requires more maturity and self-awareness than most people are capable of because they've never needed to develop it. That's part of what we are asking you to commit to when you come here.