Service of self is inevitably dissatisfying.
I don’t think this is a particularly controversial statement to make.
You’ll find similar things said in different ways throughout many of the traditional religions of the world.
The Hindus and Sikhs encourage seva or selfless service.
Christianity has the story of the good Samaritan and Jesus implores “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”
Taoism doesn’t explicitly encourage selfless service, but attempting to live in accordance with wu wei certainly seems to result in considerable humility and a natural attitude of giving.
However, even though our spiritual traditions encourage being in service to others, our Western culture certainly does not.
Being selfish is often seen as a badge of honour and heroic in a modern society that lauds achievement in business, a lone wolf approach and being capable of manipulating and controlling others for personal gain.
It’s not pretty, but it seems obviously the case to me in so many domains.
So, in order to cultivate this approach to life within oneself, one must be willing to swim upstream, against the gravitational pull of what everyone else around us seems to be doing.
Just doing that requires a great deal of wilfulness, courage and determined self-discipline. But even if that approach is practised for some time, getting it to stick and being willing to consciously sacrifice oneself for another over and over again seems to require another ingredient.
I don’t think logic alone can get you there.
I don’t think you can decide it’s a good idea and then go out and just make it happen.
I do think love is a requirement to truly be in service.
Recently, I became a father and this has been something I’ve contemplated a lot over the last 12 months or so.
What does it mean to be a good father?
What does it mean to be a good husband to the mother of my child?
What do I want my life to be about in this phase or epoch of my existence?
Over and over again, I keep coming back to being in service to my family and, necessarily, to be available for love to flow through me towards my wife and son.
This involves self sacrifice.
There are many choice points that you come across as a father. Choice points where you can explicitly choose service of self or service of your family. I am emphasising family here because it is so prevalent in my recent experience, but I believe you can substitute family here for anything else in life you deem worth of being in service to; your friends, your community, a particular cause that you are devoted to, even strangers on the street. But for me, the choice points revolve around family. And, the more I pay attention to the outcomes from these choice points, the more obvious it becomes that service to self is inevitably dissatisfying.
In my experience, it leads to a sense of separation, aloneness, a surface level existence, a drought of meaning, temporary relief and longer term pain, boredom and depression.
I think this position can also be arrived at by following a thought experiment as well. Let’s make it a very simple one for clarity’s sake. Imagine one choice point that will arrive for you tomorrow. If you follow path A, you will spend the rest of your life pursuing a career path filled with status, prestige and material success, but you will spend most of your waking hours either working or thinking about work and you will neglect family, friends and other important relationships in your life. You will be pursuing the path of service of self. If you follow path B, you will forego the material possessions, you will forego the money and the security, you will forego the career progression, but you will spend quality time with your family and friends at every opportunity, you will help them achieve success in their lives based on what success means to them, you will establish and nurture close and meaningful relationships whenever possible. You will be pursuing the path of service of others.
Which path would you follow if you had to choose one?
And why?
Now, obviously, this is an oversimplified thought experiment for the purpose of making a point. Life doesn’t actually work this way and you can pursue both goals simultaneously and most do. But the point remains that the results will follow based on where we place our focus in life.
To me, it seems that path A just doesn’t hold a lot of promise in the long run. Letting that set of values play out, I can project into the future when I’m 80 and foresee a lot of regrets. A lot of ‘if only’ going on. I just can’t see that path ever being satisfying in the end.
Path B, on the other hand, doesn’t contain the glitz and glamour of path A. It is simpler. Slower. More humble. But, to me, feels rich and rewarding and worthwhile.
The Buddha said that life is dukkha.
This can be translated as life is dissatisfying.
Yes, I think that’s true.
But I also believe there’s a way in which we can recognise this and then either contribute to this sense of dissatisfaction by pursuing a dead end or realigning ourselves with something more real, more tangible, more meaningful.
We all have choices along the way.
What is yours?