I
love
assisting. Assisting's cardinal rule is
"Get
more out of assisting than you put in.".
Wait!
Can that really
work?
When you assist, don't you have to put more into assisting than you
get
out of it? Actually
"Get
more out of assisting than you put in" isn't a difficult rule to follow
if you assist - I mean if you really assist. You always
get
more out of assisting than you put in. It goes with the territory.
That's just
the way
it is with assisting. As I said, I
love
assisting. But I don't like helping. So the
questions
arise "If I don't like helping, can I ever
serve?",
and "If I don't like helping, am I not insular? isolated? uncaring?
selfish?", and "What's the difference?".
The difference between helping and assisting isn't a trivial one. It's
critical to differentiate between the two. And we're thrown to think
"Helping shmelping / assisting: that's just
playing
with semanticsLaurence!
There's no difference.". But
listen:
it's all semantics, and there is a critical
difference.
The way
we
language
what we do, is
the way
we set the
context
for what we do, and
the way
we set the
context
for what we do, impacts the outcome of what we do, especially its
degree of
workability
and satisfaction. So what then is the critical
difference between helping and assisting?
My sense of what helping is, is this: it's offering my support to make
something
work
that isn't
working,
to
participate
in
fixing
something that's broken, to make something right that's
wrong,
to
complete
something that's incomplete. There's
nothing
amiss with helping. Just notice the overall
context
of helping, is something's incomplete, not
working,
not yet right, and I'm trying to
fix
it. Even more than that: that's what I'm moving toward
when I'm helping. The opportunity of assisting on the other hand, is
bringing my
already
alrightness (if you will) to the situation, to
participate
fully and
wholly
while bringing forth
who I really amas a gift. The overall
context
of assisting is
completion,
workability,
beingalready
alright,
contribution.
That's where I'm coming from (not moving toward) when I'm
assisting.
With that in place as the
background,
I'm assisting on a local team preparing and
serving
a sit-down meal for the homeless people of our village. The
context
for this team, is not "helping". I'm not helping the team, the team
isn't helping the homeless, and I'm certainly not helping the homeless
(and if I were, it would insult and demean both the team and the
homeless). When we assist like this, there aren't two
groups of people. There's not we the preparers, and
they the homeless. There's only one: humanity. We're all
just people. I am no different than them (actually
I used to be
different, now I am the same
- to
re-create
a
vintage Erhard
distinction). That's the
context
within which any
realcontribution
is made. It's more than that actually: it's that it's impossible for me
to make a difference if I'm coming from a place which regards the
human beingsthey are, as in some
wayqualitatively different than the
human beingswe are / I am.
I'm wearing an apron,
standing
at a kitchen counter slicing zucchini and squash, then adding shredded
cauliflower and carrots for a baked dish. Others around me are
preparing fruit and pasta. And more are preparing (it looks like) a
fish dish. The
background soundtrack
is given by a CD of golden oldies, along with which everyone is
singing lustily (I think I'm doing a pretty good rendition of Frankie
Valli's falsetto). Some preparers are dancing in place as they
slice and dice. The joy is palpable.
"Would you like some more?" I ask a diner. Surprised anyone's asking,
he requests another cup of milk which I
get
for him,
wondering
where you shower when you're homeless (I'm trying to
imagine
what I'd do in that situation). I flinch at how bizarre it is that we,
the great United States of America, have homelessness at all, given we
spent $1.6
trillion*
on the Iraq / Afghanistan wars from 2001 to 2014 to dubious effect, a
fraction of which would've eliminated our homeless
problem entirely.
