In the Service of Life
by Susan Gammage, Baha'i Life Coach
In my Bahá’à inspired life coaching practice, people often ask about the concept of service and how it differs from codependence. Where does selflessness fit? Where does being selfless cross the line into being a doormat?
Many years back, I discovered this incredibly insightful article which explained it perfectly so I reprint it here. It’s by Rachel Naomi Remen, and I found it at: http://www.theinterpretersfriend.com/Terpsnet/11.html
In recent years the question “how can I help?†has become meaningful to many people. But perhaps there is a deeper question we might consider. Perhaps the real question is not “how can I help? But “how can I serve?â€
Serving is different from helping. Helping is based on inequality; it is not a relationship between equals. When you help you use your own strength to help those of lesser strength. If I’m attentive to what’s going on inside of me when I’m helping, I find that I’m always helping someone who’s not as strong as I am, who is needier than I am. People feel this inequality.
When we help we may inadvertently take away from people more than we could ever give them; we may diminish their self-esteem, their sense of worth, integrity and wholeness. When I help I am very aware of my own strength. But we don’t serve with our strength, we serve with ourselves. We draw from all of our experiences. Our limitations serve, our wounds serve, even our darkness can serve. The wholeness in us serves the wholeness in others and the wholeness in life. The wholeness in you is the same as the wholeness in me. Service is a relationship between equals.
Helping incurs debt. When you help someone they own you one. But serving, like healing, is mutual. There is no debt. I am as served as the personal I am serving. When I help, I have a feeling of satisfaction. When I serve, I have a feeling of gratitude. These are very different things.
Serving is also different from fixing. When I fix a person I perceive them as broken, and their broken-ness requires me to act. When I fix I do not see the wholeness in the other person or trust the integrity of the life in them. When I serve I see and trust that wholeness. It is what I am responding to and collaborating with.
There is distance between ourselves and whatever or whomever we are fixing. Fixing is a form of judgments. All judgment creates distance, a disconnection, and experience of difference. In fixing there is an inequality of expertise that can easily become a more distance. We cannot serve at a distance. We can only serve that to which we are profoundly connected, that which we are willing to touch. This is Mother Teresa’s basic message. We serve life not because it is broken but because it is holy.
Hope you found this as insightful as I did!
I want to leave you with a quote from the Bahá’à Writings as a final thought:
The service of the friends belongs to God, not to them.
(Abdu’l-Baha, Tablets of Abdu’l-Baha v1, p. 61)
What are your thoughts? Post your comments here.
March 24th, 2009 at 8:05 pm
This is a nice post, Susan.
I had a few hard times when I was young, and it has always made me sensitive to other people’s pride (the good sort of pride, I mean: self respect and the wish for self-reliance). I’m a proud person too, although perhaps with a bit of the bad sort of pride as well.
It feels nice to be of service to people, but to rob them of dignity is far too steep a price.
It’s also a very humiliating thing to have to ask for help. I was always somewhat aware of this, but recent events have made me acutely aware of it. I guess most people are just embarrassed. They don’t want to interfere, so they wait to be asked.
When the time comes that I am blessed with the opportunity to be one who gives help (I used to love being that person!), instead of the the one who needs help (I hate being that guy!), I hope I always remember this lesson.