On Being of Service

Some recent conversations, experiences and explorations into religious themes got me reflecting on the notion and nature of "service" of late. What follows isn't meant to be some great final truth, but rather something that can maybe give us all a little more breathing room.

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I imagine that there are two perspectives on service (many more are certainly possible and valid), nevertheless there seem to be two that stand out to me.

I

One perspective is that service is in the eye of the receiver. Do I mean the beholder? Perhaps, in the sense that anyone can have the experience of being a receiver, even if they're only a bystander.

From this perspective, it is right to say that "to be of service" is simply to be exactly as you are, in even the most abstractly social of spaces. If you, or anything you do, or anything that somehow emanates from you happens to interact with anyone at all, then you are of service. In the practical sense, simply to exist as a human being is to be of service.

For one who would experience themselves as a receiver, this perspective grants the greatest of agencies. On the one hand it exposes their freedom to interpret their experience however they choose, as well as the power and responsibility that come with that freedom. On the other hand this perspective grants everyone else the freedom to be exactly as they are. It grants everyone else the freedom to be on the journey they're on. It takes agenda, control, manipulation and fixing out of the picture. Thus, it grants others, and potentially the whole world, not only the freedom to be, but also the freedom to let go of agenda, control, manipulation and fixing too.

I suspect that secretly, nobody really wants to wield an agenda, control or manipulate. We do these things because we think we have to. We do them as coping mechanisms. In comparison to the spontaneity of being, coping mechanisms feel joyless, disembodied and mechanical, almost by definition.

So, to hold and embody the perspective that to be is to serve is potentially a road to the liberation of the world.

II

Yet you may find yourself resisting this perspective, wanting to say, "yeah, but wait a minute!"

Fair enough; this perspective can also become a mighty rationalization and a bewildering obfuscation. It can offer a fine place for ill intent to hide.

I think that's part of why many people seem to recoil, and want a less generous perspective on what counts as "being of service."

III

We want a way to discern love, care, kindness and loyalty from disregard, we want a way to promote the one and discourage the other.

Thus the second perspective, the one that's all about doing your part, the one we seem to put in front of each other most of the time.

At it's best, this perspective arises from a genuine plea from the core of our being. It begins with recognizing the physiological reality of everyone's needs. It begins with being genuinely moved by the tragic side of the human condition; with truly caring about the people touched; with the awe and humility of our commonality with them. The plea behind this perspective invites reflection on what we can do from where we are. It invites us to step out of ourselves. It invites us to consider our connections, and our community. It invites us to remember that life isn't about us alone, and that deep down, we really don't want it to be.

So, to hold and embody the care behind the narrower perspective on service provides potentially a road to loving and connecting the world.

IV

But again you may beg to differ. You might want to argue, "That's not how it goes at all! A road to imprisoning and suffocating the world, more like!"

Fair enough. If the plea behind the narrower perspective goes unheard long enough, it will insist that some things are service and others are not. It will take reciprocity into its own hands. It will define "giving" and "taking" according to what it sees as its interests. It will become transactional. It will begin to inspect intentions. It will make some people good and others bad. It will make itself judge, jury, and executioner.

Only a little further, the idea of service becomes a weapon. It becomes the slope by which natural guilt descends into unnatural shame, self-loathing and repression; by which some people are included and others excluded; by which people are goaded--or goad themselves--all the way to martyrdom; by which aliveness is squelched, passion is silenced, and creativity harassed out of children; by which groups become rigid, dogmatic and surgically controlled; by which cultures become divided and can't admit it to themselves; by which societies become locked in the unspeakable tension and frozen rage of never ending emotional warfare.

What a perfect condition, you might add, for the forging of good actors who care nothing for community at all. What a perfect condition for such good actors to cloak themselves and twist the narrower perspective of service to meet personal ends they'll often hide, even from themselves. You would be absolutely right, of course. I've been a good actor myself at times.

V

Thus we insist again on that first perspective. To be is to serve, even when the receiver refuses to see.

We yearn for the freedom to be ourselves. We seem to know from the core of our being that being ourselves is no threat to anyone and no threat to the community, quite the opposite in fact. We seem to know from the core of our being that people and communities, and even the world itself, are far stronger and far more flexible than they dare imagine. We seem to know from deep within that no matter what gets said in the public sphere, ours is the view of faith. We seem to know from deep within that we are freest to care for one another when our capacities are unburdened, when we're free of shame, when we honor our agency, when we are truly at choice.

We find ourselves wanting to remind that no one can "not be of service." Our only concern is to ease our beloved fellows into freedom, into an end of suffering and loneliness, by helping them see.

No, not even that, for such is not our job.

VI

Thus, you might say we're stuck in a loop and doomed to repeat it forever.

But I'm not so sure.

Is it a loop or is it a dynamic tension?

I imagine that moments of dynamic tension are the moments where discourse can really transform life for the better--assuming we feel safe enough to step out of our positions.

I think we're only stuck as long as we insist that there's really a limited territory called "service" that we need to own.

Maybe it's time to poke behind the word, and explore the possibility that the concept of service, while useful and insightful, isn't the most fundamentally basic particle of spiritual truth we often think; we can go a step deeper.

I believe that both perspectives on service sprout from seeds fundamental to the human character.

VII

Conventional wisdom often tells us that love of self and love of others are incompatible, that one is bad and the other good, that to have one we must forgo the other.

Then some provocateur will claim they've got the real wisdom and say "vice versa!"

We often have heated debates over which is right and which is wrong, and even when we seem to be debating some other topic, these battling attitudes are close at hand.

But what if both love of self and love of others emerge from a single experience of potential, even of awe?

Awareness of self and awareness of others are two parts of one realization. There is no "me" until there is "you." There's no "you" until there is "me."

Once there's "me" (and also "you"), it becomes possible to experience potential. By potential I mean everything that having a distinct, sensitive, physical body (including mind, emotions, inner life, senses, experiences, sociality, learning, hands and feet, etc.) makes possible. Really, the experience of potential goes on and on. I suspect that this experience happens for all of us, even though many of us come to deny and suppress it when it becomes too painful to hold. If we can stay open, we might be awed for a lifetime.

Once there's "me" (and also "you"), it's also only natural to imagine and realize that those who look like "me" are beings like "me," who experience potential too. Maybe as "I" do, maybe unimaginably differently, but surely others can be moved by potential as "I" am, and there lies wonder, mystery, and the background of deep connection.

VIII

But other people and deep connection become a problem when we experience scarcity--when there's two of us and only one of something at least one of us thinks we both need. Usually the scarcity is imagined and sometimes its real, but the perception of scarcity and the fear it arouses are what matter.

We have to do a lot of work to deny deep connection. We have to justify and rationalize the denial. Unless we're very experienced with the perception (and the illusion) of scarcity, we'll probably cut ourselves to pieces in order to survive.

Once we're under the spell of scarcity, "me and you" becomes "me or you." Love of self and love of others seem incompatible. The gifts in both get lost, and then quietly erased while nobody's looking. Even the word "love" can become ironic, hyperbolic and pejorative.

In the experience of scarcity, "service" becomes something that's necessary to name. It is in the prolonged experience of scarcity that we give "service" a narrower and narrower definition. It is in the persistent experience of scarcity that "service" becomes as derided by some as it is celebrated by others.

IX

But what if there is something to this either-or business? Love of self might be called a lot of things, among them "dignity," "strength" and even "humility." Love of others might also be called a lot of things, among them "empathy," "compassion," and "care." Both are essential. Perhaps it's a more recent wisdom that says it's not really possible to love others until you can love yourself.

Yet when we use "love" hyperbolically and pejoratively, perhaps what we really mean is attention plus denial. At any given moment, our attention really does seem to be limited. We can love many things at once, care about many things at once, but we can only give full attention to one thing at a time.

Thus it might be quite natural to grant our seeing, and then want to be seen, and then when we feel truly seen, to grant our seeing again. Perhaps the process is much like breath--in, out, in, out, in again--and just like breath this process of relating provides essential and universal nourishment for the miracle of growth.

In the experience of scarcity, the rhythm is broken. Maybe someone doesn't get seen and they toggle between hiding and forcing being seen. Or maybe someone doesn't get seen by such a wounded bird after working hard to see them, and this one cycles between feeling resentful, obligated and unworthy. Maybe when everyone works harder the pattern only gains energy. People become bitter, angry, exhausted, divided. Factions form. People start pointing to roles and obligations. Among many things, people point to service.

I know this particular game because I've played both characters at different times. Lately I seem to be on the forcing end, though I've also been the One Who Gives Too Much. I know I'm hardly alone, and I know there are plenty of other versions of the game.

X

I sense that ever turning attention toward what's alive in the moment is the natural flicker of animal consciousness. Nevertheless, when someone uses a story about someone else to justify, explain or defend not seeing them, that natural flicker becomes a shared experience of rejecting and being rejected. This experience happens, even when the person rejecting hides their story.

No matter what we say, no matter how much we steel ourselves, our bodies register the experience of being rejected. Our bodies still register the collapsing, the confusion, the wondering, the shame. What our bodies are really registering is someone's severing of connection with us. It's probably good advice to recognize that rejection happens to everyone alive. But the body remembers.

To be the one rejecting is just as painful. To let ourselves reject, we have to deny that original, wondrous experience of potential and all the hope, joy, excitement and possibility it inspired. To diminish someone's humanity, to reduce them to something more predictable and mechanical, we need to gaslight ourselves in a fundamental way. It's so hard and painful to do that we need to make it easier by telling ourselves, and probably everyone else, the story about the person we're rejecting. We probably also need to tell ourselves to be strong, to stand up for ourselves, maybe many other things. It's probably good advice to recognize that one person's wide-open heart really can be another's easy mark sometimes, that hurt people really do hurt people, and that not everyone is in a place to truly see us even when we make the effort to see them. Nevertheless, the body remembers.

As either character in this or a hundred other plays, we may carry on in our stories and counter-stories about one another for generations. Distraught by our own unmet needs, we'll make our nemeses wrong for being "the kind of people they are," and make ourselves right, or at least justified, for being "the kind of people we are."

The irony of all this is that were really making our nemeses wrong for wanting from us what we don't have to give, or for not wanting to give us what they do not have to give. To clarify the irony even further, we're making them wrong for wanting what we want, but of course we're right for wanting it, right?

Are we right for wanting, or wrong for wanting? Is wanting good, or is it bad? The body registers the paradox. The conscious mind doesn't know what to do with it. Ideologies and theologies ensue. I imagine that paradox could be the reason why why even the philosophers in societies gripped by the experience of scarcity so often seem half-mad.

If the play of scarcity shapes the contour of our lives, if it comes to that place where new actors take up the familiar roles, we may be shocked if we ever do realize that our nemeses are not our nemeses not because we're opposites, but because they're, exactly like us, because they want the same thing we want, because they too want to be seen.

Their only problem, and our only problem, is that we've found ourselves in a community so filled with the loneliness and resentment of unfulfilled need that we've all become divided within ourselves.

XI

I don't know what to do when what's scarce in a community is something like food or water. As an ex-engineer, ex-architect, ex-permaculture designer, now self-absorbed philosopher content-creator I have a few ideas. But then there's a reality on the ground in some of the places I've been. Sometimes the scarcity is real, the social distrust is endemic, and even a shovel is hard to come by. If the scarcity is immediate enough it doesn't matter who caused it or why.

When there's a load to carry, it's only natural to help if I'm able. If I can't carry my own weight, it's only natural to ask for help, and to look for ways I can help in return.

Given the world we find ourselves in, "service" is a helpful idea to have around. It sticks around because a lot of people think its helpful, and they're probably right a lot of the time. For those who want to share the joy and connection that comes with giving; for those who want to share the gratitude, challenge and connection that comes with receiving; for those who want to celebrate the inspired spirit that's alive in their community, "service" is a wonderful thing to be able to name.

And yes, even the most rich, famous, high-functioning and beautiful among us need help sometimes.

That's why I feel that to take some final ideological position for or against the idea of "service" would be cheap, dishonest and self-serving at best.

Better then, to bask in dynamic tension, where I can hold compassion for myself and all of us, where I can celebrate empathy when that's what I'm moved by, and agency, when that's when I'm moved by.

I believe there's an answer to the riddle "me or you." In the heat of conflict or the simmering of resentment, this answer is not easy to grasp, yet it's there in remembering that my "nemesis" only seems a "nemesis" because we want the same thing. Even when scarcity is physical and real, it's often complicated by perceptions and fears that make connection and cooperation far more difficult. Certainly even in the most dire of situations, reciprocity in seeing one another can make some difference. Sometimes it can even make the kind of transformative difference that lets us see the puzzle of our apparent scarcity from new angles, and solve it brilliantly.

I often want to be seen so bad it hurts, but... and... so do you. Realizing that, it's hard to keep resenting you and keep telling stories about you. I know what its like to not feel seen when you want to be seen. That's an experience I can understand and relate to. Even if I have nothing else to give, I know I can give my seeing. Perhaps all I need to give it is a bit of faith. Perhaps if I see you even for a moment, you'll see me in return. Even if you don't, I know I've given my best.

Then, just maybe, we begin to breathe, and to heal.