Service: As I see it

Service, Lending ,Business, Flattery,  Slavery and Arrogance: A Spectrum

In the discussion about the meditation on Prana in the last post we tried to understand how an educated mind with regards to the act of consuming food can transform from senseless and selfish behavior to selfless service. 

Service is a concept that also needs to be understood with greater clarity. When a well meaning mind blindly picks on a message to make service its way of living and goes about serving everyone who crosses his path, sooner or later he will be punished for the service. Not because service was a bad thing but because service was not understood clearly and what was performed was something else . 

What is service? 

The act of helping someone else is service.

That’s a naive person’s definition of service 

The act of lending one’s energies to help others without expecting or accepting anything in return is service. 

Better but that is not a complete definition.

The act of lending one’s energies and time to help someone who needs it or asks for it, and when you do it without expecting or accepting anything in return is service. 

Nope. Still something is missing. 

Providing your time and/or services to someone who is not in a position to help themselves or unable to get that help from sources that are responsible to provide that help, for valid reasons, and when you provide it without expecting or accepting anything in return, and when it is done believing it was your duty and without a sense of doership, and therefore immediately forgotten that you did it, that’s when it becomes real service. 

When you provide the services with a mutual understanding of getting some returns for the services at a later date it is lending. Not a service. 

When there is a clear price tag you have spelled, suggested, expected or accepted for the help you offer, with immediate remuneration, it is business, not service.

When you are offering help to someone who is powerful and endowed with resources to buy the assistance if they need them, and your intention for helping is a concealed expectation of future favors, it is not service. It is a form of flattery. Pleasing. In order to stay in the good books of the other party. 

When you are offering assistance to someone who seeks help but in reality can help themselves, even when you do it without expecting anything in return, that is also not service. That is enabling them to become dependent. 

When the enabled start expecting you to do everything for them even though they have the capacity or resources to do the task by themselves or through paid labor, and you continue to oblige for free, it is not service. It is slavery. Whether voluntary or enforced.

When you are required by duty to provide assistance to someone who is not in a position to help themselves and yet you decline to help them that is arrogance. 

So simply becoming an available resource to work for others without the full awareness of the situation is not service. It is stupidity. A servant is not required to be stupid, contrary to the ideas of those who tend to behave like bosses. A true servant must be just as intelligent or more intelligent than the ones he/she serves. Or in no time he/she will become a slave and there would be none else to be blamed but his own ignorance. 

You are born to be a servant of your creator. Not even a servant of your parents, spouse or kids. As long as they can do their own tasks let them do it on their own. Do not train them to be dependent upon you. That is not service. It is disservice. Training them to be independent is true service.

But remain truly vigilant of the situation when they are truly unable to help themselves. In those circumstances if you refuse to help, then that becomes arrogance and dereliction of duty. 

Therefore know what you are doing. No matter who calls for help. 

In my lifetime I saw my parents, as physicians trained in their times with the philosophy of service ingrained deeply along with medical science, provide their time and energies to whoever came to the door seeking help. Their beliefs stopped them from insisting a payment for the service. Their profession was a means to sustain their home and family. To receive a remuneration for the work was not unethical or unlawful. To insist on it was unethical by the standards they were given. Those who were genuinely poor and had no means to pay for the services benefited fairly from these practices. Those who had the means to pay and yet repeatedly disregarded their obligations to pay were reaping benefits unfairly. I have seen these behaviors from up close. My parents refused to change their ideology at the expense of their own financial hardships. My frustrations knew no end watching them being repeatedly and shamelessly fleeced by selfish people. 

I thought I was smarter. That I would never allow anyone to take such undue advantage of my generosity. Until I realized I wasn’t smart enough. People who I believed were earnest when they asked to borrow big sums of money from me forgot their promise to return it within a certain period once they got the money. People who came to the door for donations for charity proved to be scammers. People who pretended and “volunteered” to “help” me in times of my difficulty kept big expectations for return favors that I wasn’t in a position to make. I acknowledge that I do not always feel a 100% certainty that who I tend to “serve” with my definition of service, truly meets the criteria. Nevertheless I remain more vigilant than I did in the past. I ask more questions. I look for evidence of the need. Evidence that the resources are used for the purposes they are allocated. That I am not enabling someone to continue wrong practices. That I am not making someone dependent on me. My philosophy rests on apparent self contradiction. I do not owe anything to anyone. At the same time I owe everything I can say is mine to the world. The power to decide what to give to who and when rests in my hands. I could make a mistake in giving or denying. But I can own my mistakes. I can give up the credit for things I end up doing right. Either way I see things better than I did earlier. Even my mistakes. I feel grateful for the mistakes. That keeps me human. 

I appreciate my parents so much better now for their service. It still doesn’t align with my definition of service. But that does not dismiss the fact that my parents were noble souls. Nobility may not become an attribute I would be recognized for. But my thinking makes every effort to remain true to itself at any given moment. 

I still expect my 88 year old mother to serve her food into her plate, warm it and eat it. I do not rush like a dutiful daughter to do those things for her when it is meal time. I do not expect her to wash her plate or cook her food. But I do not stop her from doing those tasks when she opts to do them. I let her do what she can do. I boost her to do what I know or believe she is capable of and I discourage her from doing what is risky for her to do. There is no automatic conventional behavior in me that someone would see as service. The same applies to my attitude to my husband and my kids. I expect each one can carry their own load until they truly can’t. I’m a boss lady and there is only one entity above me. And that’s the Unmanifest source that nourishes my thoughts and my vision. One that provides my breath. I am happy to follow that breath for the one last time when it exits this body. Whenever it is meant to be.