Let Me Help, Wait Fix, No, I Mean Serve You
“When you help, you see life as weak. When you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole” (Remen). If we only help and fix others then we indirectly create the discourse that these others are weak and broken. Remen believes that if we are going to serve the community then we need to realize that we a part of the community as well as the people that we are serving. Remen wants us to understand that we are one and not separate from the people that we choose to serve. Illich only sees volunteer and charity work as “helping and fixing” the people in Mexico. In fact, he is offended that we even believe that we could somehow help these people. He wants the people of the U.S. to understand that “… the way of life [we] have chosen simply is not alive enough to be shared” (Illich 2). The main point of his argument is that just because our way of life seems like the right of life for us does not necessarily mean it is the right way of life somewhere else such as Mexico. This concept also ties in with the letter that the Iroquois sent Ben Franklin about the opportunity to allow some of the Iroquois to get an American education. While the Iroquois appreciated the gesture they declined, by basically saying that our way of life was not their way of life. They were grateful, but explained that some of the students they had sent to get an education came back almost useless to the tribe. They did not book education. The education they needed to survive was the ability to run fast and hunt. Those skills were lost while they were in school. Those students may have received a top education in our eyes, but in the eyes of the Iroquois, their book smarts were entirely useless to their way of life. We cannot help or fix a community, simply because it does not match our lifestyle. What may work for us may not work for others, and it is important to understand that concept.
My role at the Ritter House is definitely a helping role. I only feel like I am giving these people a short term solution their long term problem. Ritter House’s demographic is people that we have classified as less fortunate. The “less fortunate” is a form of discourse used to describe these people that makes them sound like they need our help or need us to help them fix something in their lives. We are helping these people by providing them with free food, but that is all we’re doing. There is some of the social aspect in seeing these people every week, but there is nothing that is truly changing for the people that come to Ritter House. Each week I am starting to recognize the people that come in. I am not like Illich who sees community service as a type of disservice to the world, but I am also not like Remen who believes that serving others is the way we can express how connected we are to the community. Service to me is taking time to give back to the community, but for service learning a huge part of the program is reciprocity, and there are times when I feel like I am taking more than I am giving. Every week I am given the opportunity to provide people with free food, but I cannot always give them what they want, because Ritter House does not have those types of resources, and that reminds me that these people are not at a position in their life to just get what they want when they want it. And in return for providing these people with food I get to fulfill my requirements as well as getting the personal satisfaction of doing something for someone else. But the people that we are serving are probably grateful to have access to free food, while I look at the food and judge on whether or not I would ever eat something like that. I guess it all comes down to perspective.
If I wanted to change and contribute to the abolishment of homelessness then serving in a food pantry is not the way to go about it. What I would need to do to make a change is to be like Calderon’s students. Calderon’s students were given the opportunity to work alongside immigrants to in a Pamona day labor center. These students are not just watching these people pass by. This work is allowing them to understand how these people think and how they work, thus leading them to understand the needs of these people. They are not just being told, they are experiencing the same hardships and struggles the people deal with every day. I believe that obtaining an actual real life experience is the only way to completely understand a certain group of people. Only then can a person begin to find a way to eradicate the world of the issues that matter to them the most.
