Why “Service” and “Giving Back” Get It Wrong

We need fresh terms for what we refer to as “service” or “giving back.” I say this as someone who taught for 27 years at a college where “service” was treated as a sacred obligation and “giving back” a wedding vow. 

The problem is not the intention behind these words but their resonance. They can sound as if they are spoken from a step or two above the person being served, as though someone with a little extra is now returning a portion of it. However well meant, the language suggests a subtle moral hierarchy.

For a long time, I lived comfortably inside that vocabulary. I was one of the fortunate sons on the giving-back track, until a moment at, of all places, a local boxing gym, unsettled me.

For years, I devoted a good deal of time to working with mostly teenage boys at risk in my community. One of the ways I tried to be in their corner was as a boxing trainer. Many kids on the edge carry an edge of anger. I should know I was one of them. And from my own experience, I also knew boxing can offer a way to face that anger, discipline it, and release it without letting it do damage.

Starting a boxing gym out of my garage in the exurb of Northfield was not easy, but with help, we made it work. When you have a promising boxer, though, there is no progress without competitive sparring, and that kind of work was hard to find locally. So one Saturday morning, I promised to take one of my prospects up to the Circle of Discipline gym in Minneapolis.

Almost always supportive, my wife was a little grouchy this time about losing most of Saturday, and truth be told, I would have preferred to stay in bed. A recent immigrant, my boxer had not been in the United States long and was still learning English. Conversation on the drive into the Cities was sparse and awkward.

When we arrived, I leapt out of my pickup, went to the entrance, only to discover the door was locked. We were an hour early. I climbed back into the cab feeling mildly sorry for myself and trying to figure out how to pass the time. Between my boxer’s fledgling English and my eighth-grade Spanish, I was not sure what we would talk about.

On the dashboard sat a children’s book I had planned to donate to the library. The professor in me began to think my fighter was a father and that improving his English would help his two young children.

Somewhat nervously, I handed him the paperback, The Big Porcupine, and said, “Read to me.” I had no idea how he would respond.

He took the book, looked at me without expression, and then began to read. Slowly. Carefully. Some combinations of letters are especially hard for Spanish speakers, such as sk, sch, and th. When we came to words like sky, he stumbled. I gently tapped his shoulder, and he continued.

And then, unexpectedly, the waterworks started, I began to tear up.

What moved me was not simply his effort, but the fact that this tough, taciturn man, someone not inclined toward displays of vulnerability, was trusting me enough to let me into a small, challenging part of his life. In that cramped pickup truck, something shifted. I no longer felt like someone offering help from above, but like someone on the receiving end. 

I did not have a name for it at the time, but that hour changed how I thought about “service.” I no longer patted myself on the back for being a volunteer giving something to those less fortunate. No, I began to grasp what had really been happening all along. The gift was not the time I was giving. It was being trusted, being allowed into a life different from my own and yet not so different either.

If we want to do better by one another, we may need better words, words that do not place anyone above anyone else. Words that sound less like service and more like trust, the trust that comes with being allowed into someone else’s life.