The Pleasure of Service
There is a particular pleasure in helping another person. Doctors, teachers, social workers, parents, friends, and volunteers can all experience the deep satisfaction of using their time and effort for someone else’s benefit. Service, one of the Four Traits, is the commitment to pursue that pleasure on purpose.
But experiencing the pleasure of service doesn’t make the pull toward self-centeredness disappear. The central question is: when I serve, who is at the center, the person being served or me?
A few months ago I saw a new doctor. I told him I avoided medication when possible. After my blood test, he immediately sent in a prescription for a statin. I emailed him that I’d prefer to try lowering my cholesterol through diet and mild weight loss first. He insisted his standards required a prescription in my case.
Years ago I had a similar experience with a teacher. I asked if my child could focus on a specific set of skills that year. He told me he’d love to customize the curriculum for each student, but he couldn’t accommodate that kind of individual attention. I thought this was reasonable.
Neither person was necessarily wrong or self-centered. Service doesn’t mean giving people whatever they ask for. But both encounters made me think about a challenge built into service: how do we keep the needs of the person in front of us at the center while working within our own standards, routines, and limitations?
Outside of professional life, the same question becomes even easier to see: who is at the center? Nobody is making us drive a friend to the airport, sit with someone through a hard week, or show up with dinner when a neighbor is overwhelmed. In those moments, the competing pleasures are easy to see: the pleasure of keeping our time and comfort for ourselves, and the pleasure of giving them to someone who needs us.
That choice appears throughout ordinary life. Self-centeredness finds pleasure in what I preserve for myself. Service finds pleasure in what I willingly give to another.
The first ends with me. The second creates connection. That is the deeper pleasure of service.
