A Way to Meaningful Service
One of my life-long struggles is finding appropriate and meaningful channels for my desire to serve.
I feel passion in my heart, I envision various and wonderful possibilities in my head, but when my hands get to the work of service, I find myself stymied, bored, frustrated, and unsatisfied.
One of the problems is that the reach of my mind (same as any educated person's mind) is so much greater than my capacity to influence. I see the importance of addressing global warming, but I feel powerless to make a difference. I've reduced my carbon footprint and signed various petitions online, watched "Inconvenient Truth," followed the issue in the news. But what more can I do, as one individual with no particular power or influence?
There are so many issues I care about so deeply. I feel so helpless to make a difference. What I do almost always feels like a drop in the bucket. Just off the top of my head, I am concerned about torture and human rights, ending the Iraq war, global warming, international poverty, livable communities, better education, universal health care.
On the other side of the ledger, we have my various attempts at service, which I would characterize as frustrating, unfulfilling, and unproductive. I've been on various committees that have talked about issues and organized but to little visible effect. I've participated in one-day service projects that painted someone's bathroom or cleaned up a part of some woods. Actually, the woods clean up was one of my more satisfying experiences because I actually saw some results, a positive difference. What I hate most is talking, meeting, organizing, and discussing, with no visible or discernable result. With so many important political issues, change can only come about through changing people's minds, and my experience is that there is really no way to achieve that. People make up their own minds, and most people, including myself, are offended by attempts to be made to change.
So my question is, how can a desire to serve be translated into a meaningful practice of service? How should I deal with problems that are so great in scale that they are far beyond my ability to influence? How should I use my scarce time and energy, when there are so many problems and just one of me?
Or perhaps the questions is not one of service, but of the intense dissatisfaction that lies in my heart when I see the state of the world? How do I manage this energy for good rather than for ill?
I feel passion in my heart, I envision various and wonderful possibilities in my head, but when my hands get to the work of service, I find myself stymied, bored, frustrated, and unsatisfied.
One of the problems is that the reach of my mind (same as any educated person's mind) is so much greater than my capacity to influence. I see the importance of addressing global warming, but I feel powerless to make a difference. I've reduced my carbon footprint and signed various petitions online, watched "Inconvenient Truth," followed the issue in the news. But what more can I do, as one individual with no particular power or influence?
There are so many issues I care about so deeply. I feel so helpless to make a difference. What I do almost always feels like a drop in the bucket. Just off the top of my head, I am concerned about torture and human rights, ending the Iraq war, global warming, international poverty, livable communities, better education, universal health care.
On the other side of the ledger, we have my various attempts at service, which I would characterize as frustrating, unfulfilling, and unproductive. I've been on various committees that have talked about issues and organized but to little visible effect. I've participated in one-day service projects that painted someone's bathroom or cleaned up a part of some woods. Actually, the woods clean up was one of my more satisfying experiences because I actually saw some results, a positive difference. What I hate most is talking, meeting, organizing, and discussing, with no visible or discernable result. With so many important political issues, change can only come about through changing people's minds, and my experience is that there is really no way to achieve that. People make up their own minds, and most people, including myself, are offended by attempts to be made to change.
So my question is, how can a desire to serve be translated into a meaningful practice of service? How should I deal with problems that are so great in scale that they are far beyond my ability to influence? How should I use my scarce time and energy, when there are so many problems and just one of me?
Or perhaps the questions is not one of service, but of the intense dissatisfaction that lies in my heart when I see the state of the world? How do I manage this energy for good rather than for ill?
Comments
The way to firmly uphold the principle of human dignity involves, first of all, a deeper understanding of the reason why people have inherent worth. That is, it is a question of understanding the foundations on which human dignity rests.
According to Rosmini, every human being, irrespective of his or her level of intelligence, is endowed with a completely spiritual, immaterial faculty, irreducible to any physical state of the brain, which enables human beings to have an intuition of being. Intuition is quite different from reason which proceeds in a discursive way from premises to conclusions and which can somehow be mapped to states of the brain. Intuition, unlike reason, is an immediate and direct knowledge of reality. By intuition of being, Rosmini means that man has the capacity to see the divine in all things, the capacity to see things as they really are, to see things as sacred. Often, we are not conscious of this, because it happens in the split second before we form a concept of the things or persons we are contemplating. For example, if I am observing a tree, before I conceptualize it saying to myself “this is a tree”, I catch a glimpse of the divine in the tree (the tree as it really is, without my rational, cultural, social, etc. categories superimposed on it) in a sort of pre-conceptual, pre-linguistic intuition of the tree.
Since man is capable of seeing the ray of divine light in all things, this means that he is “capax dei”, that is capable of receiving God. This is the reason why man has inherent worth and must be treated as an end and not a mere means.
Since the intuition of being is innate, everyone, even those who show no signs of a contemplative life, are endowed with this intuition and have at least the potential to see the divine in all things. This is why we have no right to view others—even if they behave badly—as “worthless”, as having “lost” their human dignity.
This may sound abstract and useless in one’s attempt to love those whom we have nothing in common with, especially if they behave badly. But having a deeper understanding of reality is half the battle. And it is this intuition of being that forms the common ground between all human beings and therefore can unite us all, breaking the between us and those who seem radically different from us.
What is the other half of the battle?
The other half of the battle involves changing radically the principle by which we act. Unfortunately, the principle by which we typically act is based on feeling: we move towards what we are attracted to and avoid what is repugnant to us. This feeling-based principle of acting is not identical and may conflict with the truth-based principle of acting, which is basically acting according to what is right, according to the truth.
It is clear that we cannot act according to the feeling-based principle if we are to respect and love all human beings because we inevitably encounter people whom we find physically, morally, and spiritually repulsive and if we were to act according to our feelings, we would readily dismiss these people. We need, instead, to act according to the truth of the matter, according to the undeniable facts that everyone has human worth and that human worth is rooted in the possibility, in every man and woman, to see the divine in all things.
Turning away from the feeling-based principle towards the truth-based principle (i.e., “converting”) takes certainly a lifelong commitment, a lifelong spiritual journey and there is certainly no overnight cure. However, various religious traditions have developed effective tools to achieve this end: spiritual reading, prayer, meditation, ascetic and penitential practice, works of charity, etc.
This is not meant to undervalue one’s feelings, but simply to point out that there is something deeper in human beings than feelings, namely, our ability to recognize moral truth and, through acts of the will, to act accordingly. Actually, the ability to recognize moral truth is related to Rosmini’s intuition of being, mentioned above, and forms the innermost part of our being. Feelings, instead, are located on a more superficial level of our being. They however may be signs of the state of our deeper being and should therefore be listened to and not ignored.
As you may well see, the love of neighbor that God commands us does not consists of feelings (that is, it is not sentimental love) but it is rooted in one’s will and intuition of being (under the form of the ability to recognize moral truth), and therefore in a deeper, or better yet, the deepest, innermost part of our being. As a consequence of this, we need not feel insincere when we strive to act kind to those whom we feel an aversion for: striving to behave kindly towards those who inspire in us negative feelings is more meritorious, more charitable than being nice to those who naturally attract us. This is so because, as already stated, when we act according to the truth, overcoming those negative feelings that prevent us from doing so, we are exercising our spiritual faculties (will and moral intuition) which lie at the deepest, innermost part of our being. Furthermore, recognizing a person’s innate dignity in spite of the negativity that person may inspire is equivalent to loving that person as a person, whereas being nice to a person whom we are attracted to is loving that person only for what he or she has (status, good looks, sporting ability, intelligence, artistic talent, etc.).
Again, this “acting according to truth” or “exercising our spiritual faculties” or “acting from the innermost part of our being” may sound impossible in face of the strong, compulsive and obsessive negative feelings we may experience. But simply acknowledging the fact mentioned above that feelings lie only on the surface of our being may be of help in overcoming them: in fact, if we were to take a step back from ourselves, looking at ourselves in the third person, and observing the mechanism by which certain feelings arise and take hold of us, we would find that such feelings, even obsessive ones, lose hold of us and disappear simply as a result of our observing them objectively.
I also see how acting from truth is in some cases necessary rather than acting from feeling. However I'm very interested in answers that integrate our being and experience rather than focus on conflicts within our being.
How is it that we can apprehend the truth of another's divine nature clearly, and so wish to act with respect for that nature?
It is certainly more worthwhile to think about how we can integrate our being, how we can bring all the manifold aspects of our existence into a meaningful unity, instead of trying to resolve conflicts or division within ourselves.
However, it is my belief that if we focus on the existential level, i.e., on the level of truth, then the rest of our being will be automatically unified as a result, as our emotions, thoughts, creativity, etc. will naturally follow or be oriented according to our existential act of accepting and living the truth.
If, on the other hand, we decide to live according to some falsehood, then our being will naturally be conflicted and divided.
Let us take a concrete example of this.
It is my view that the cure of many cases of depression involves working on the existential level of the person, i.e., trying to help the patient find meaning in his or her life. I tend to favor this existential approach in the majority of cases of depression rather than trying to work on the psychological level, in which one tries to modify the patient's feelings by drugs or by therapy. Once the patient finds meaning in his or her life, the negative psychological states naturally disappear(anxiety, depression, torpor) as well as the physical ones (chest pains, migraine headaches, etc.). In other words, the real cure for depression involves finding meaning in life and not on working directly on the person's psyche (i.e., it is not a matter of prescribing the right drugs, or finding a better job or a better girlfriend for the patient affected by depression).
In answer to your question: how to discover the divine in others and act according to this discovery?
The intuition of the divine, which is constitutive of human nature, is unique and different for every person (my relation to God is neither identical nor opposed to your relation to God, it is rather different yet complementary to yours), and it is therefore what founds the diversity, uniqueness, and creativity of people.
Therefore, a sure sign which bears witness to the fact that human beings are endowed with this intuition of the divine is that they express themselves in a unique, creative, and authentic way, in their life, relationships, work, and speech. Since creative, unique and authentic people inspire admiration and confidence, we naturally and spontaneously act good and kindly to these people and we do not need to "learn" how to act in their presence.
Unfortunately, it is often too common that people succumb to their fears and desire to conform or to play certain roles that they tend to behave and act, not according to a law of freedom or creativity but in a stereotyped, conformist, and even servile, inauthentic, and unthinking way. In such people, the intuition of being is in a dormant state and has yet to be awakened and manifested. Nevertheless, they still "have" the intuition of being(and this needs to be accepted on faith) and therefore have a right to our respect. The first attitude which we must have towards them is one of respect.
The second atttitude we need to have is one of non-judgement. While it is important to recognize the fact that certain people tend to behave badly, it is wrong to accuse them for the state in which they are. We do not know what factors have contributed to their unfortunate state (upbringing, traumatic experiences, etc.) and maybe their intuition of being is dormant through no fault of their own.
The third attitude is the desire that they realize fully their relation with God and consequently their uniqueness, creativity, and authenticity.
We must not, however, act on this desire by trying to change others directly. It is often enough that we humbly admit that we have a lot of work to do and to accept that we need to work on ourselves first before attempting to change others.
I am Rosmini's brother-in-law, but perhaps more salient to this post, I work for the UU Service Committee. The yearning you write about, the sense of hopelessness or lack of fulfillment in your service work in the face of the world's intractable problems, call to mind a passage my boss (the UUSC president) is fond of quoting. It's from the poet and essayist Wendell Berry, who posits that true activism is motivated by something far more modest than the hope for public success -- the awareness that a failure to act will endanger qualities in our hearts and spirits -- something along those lines.
I read this comment to mean that it is in the act of working towards change/social justice -- that is, in the act itself -- in which the true value of our efforts resides. On some deeper level of being, perhaps this can also be seen as a kind of self-defense, or self-preservation, for what do we or should we treasure more than the qualities of our spirits that make us human? I suppose what's implicit in this is the notion that as more people become aware of this simpler, yet more profound, basis for wanting to serve, the broader-scale change, change of the public variety, will naturally arise.
If you are interested in learning more about the Service Committee, please feel free to contact me at kkim@uusc.org.
Thank you for your comment.
Yes, I have a sense that if service is part of what it means to stay true to yourself, true to what is most essential to your beliefs about justice and beauty, then the act itself could be is own fulfillment, whether or not the desired end result is achieved or not.
Somehow I need to find a sense of fulfillment in something other than results, especially where the issues span the globe and potentially generations...