Given the article below, answer the following question. 1. ask a couple of discussion questions about the article. 2. choose a quote and explain why it is interesting. 3. Connect one idea from the article to some personal experiences. Helping, Fixing, or Serving?
By Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, MD
(The article below has been adapted to increase readability.)
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?
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 is us serves the darkness in others
and the wholeness in life. Helping incurs debt. When you help someone
they owe you one. But serving, like healing, is mutual. There is no debt. I
am as served as the person 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 brokenness 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 a distance between ourselves and whatever or whomever we are
fixing. Fixing is a form of judgement. All judgement creates distance, a
disconnection, an experience of difference. In fixing there is an inequality of
expertise that can easily become a moral 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.
If helping is an experience of strength, fixing is an experience of mastery
and expertise. Service, on the other hand, is an experience of mystery,
surrender and awe. A fixer has the illusion of being casual. A server knows
that he or she is being used and has a willingness to be used in the service
of something greater, something essentially unknown. Fixing and helping
are very personal; they are very particular, concrete and specific. We fix
and help many different things in our lifetimes, but when we serve we are
always serving the same thing. Everyone who has ever served through the
history of time serves the same thing. We are servers of the wholeness and
mystery of life.
The bottom line, of course, is that we can fix without serving. And we can
help without serving. And we can serve without fixing or helping. I think I
would go so far as to say that fixing and helping may often be the work of
the ego, and service the work of the soul. They may look similar if you're
watching from the outside, but the inner experience is different. The
outcome is often different, too.
Our service serves us as well as others. That which uses us strengthens
us. Over time we burn out. Service is renewing. When we serve, our work
itself will sustain us. Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of
life is sacred, that life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an
unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to
that purpose. Fundamentally, helping, fixing, and service are ways of
seeing life. When you help you see life as weak, when you fix, you see life
as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. For the perspective of
service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is
like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this
way of seeing.
Lastly, fixing and helping are the basis of curing, but not of healing. In 40
years of chronic illness I have been helped by many people and fixed by a
great many others who did not recognize my wholeness. All that fixing and
helping left me wounded in some important and fundamental ways. Only
service heals