The Trap of Service
I was seven years old when I fell in love with the blonde-haired, hardworking heroine who was unceasingly kind to everyone, regardless of whether they deserved it. The girl with birds and mice tripping over themselves to help her. My mom had taken my sister and me to the small movie theatre in town where we’d shared a bag of penny candy, leaned back in our plush red velvet seats and watched the Disney special.
When I started exploring fairy tale themes in my memoir essays, I assumed Cinderella would be one of the first tales I used. As an adult, I’d grown to detest Disney’s admonishment to be good and wait for a prince. But even though I made plenty of notes for a Cinderella essay, I couldn’t finish anything. I disliked the moral of the story: work hard and you will be rewarded for your selfless dedication to others. But as much as I abhorred that message, I didn’t think being of service to others was inherently wrong. In my day job, I run a food bank, a frozen meal program for seniors, and a weekly community lunch. Caring for others is how I show up in the world. It took a long time to tease apart how I understand the notion of service and what it meant to me.
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Cinderella’s goodness earned her a fairy godmother, a castle and the prince. Like most young girls, I wanted her happy ending. Instead, my dad abandoned us when I was nine years old. He walked away from our semi-detached house, the manicured yard with the workshop at the bottom of the garden, and Sunday dinners with my grandparents. He left behind his second career in social work and abandoned all his possessions — his clothes, books, and records. He gave up everything to move to a commune in south India, just outside the old French city of Pondicherry. Instead of taking care of his family, he spent his days in meditation, ate his meals in the community kitchen alongside the other devotees. He helped build a vast spherical temple, a massive solar oven, and write a new community charter guided by the principles of harmony and unity. The word “Seva” means selfless service in Sanskrit. My dad believed that service, whether that service was to a higher power or to those who were deserving, was the whole point of an incarnation. His decision to leave his family made it clear that service to others was more important than service to us.
“You need to take care of your mom and your sister,” he said, before he left.
Without my dad to support us, things were hard for our small family. My mom had left school at fifteen, so once he was gone, she earned money cleaning houses. My grandparents helped as much as they could, but we were poor.
Just like Disney, my dad gave me a map to worthiness, and I intended to follow it. I looked for ways I could be of service to others, so that I could redeem myself as a person. I smiled. Took care of my mom. And my sister. I walked the dog. I got a job babysitting, taking care of other people’s children. Then I worked as a waitress, literally, a server. I did my homework. My chores. Made the honour roll. I exceeded expectations. When would I be worthy enough?
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When the Grand Duke came calling, looking for the girl whose foot fitted the glass slipper, the birds and the mice helped Cinderella escape from the room where her stepmother had imprisoned her. Cinderella never complained, and she was rewarded for her selfless nature.
I was in my fifties before I admitted the anger my dad’s leaving had caused. At nine, I’d been too young to take care of my sister and my mom, too young to be asked to step into his role in the family. What my dad did wasn’t selfless or virtuous; it was selfish. But as a kid I hadn’t seen that; instead, I had tried to emulate his altruism.
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This wasn’t the first time that his need to be of service had created hardships for our family. When I was five, he quit his engineering job with a big tech firm to become a social worker. We’d moved from a big house in Chelmsford to a small semi-detached row house in a smaller town. He went back to school to retrain, then worked long hours for minimal pay helping those less fortunate. He took troubled youth camping on the weekend or brought kids with disabilites swimming early in the morning before the pool opened. I was jealous of those kids and the time they spent with my dad. I thought they’d found the secret to worthiness.
When I was thirteen, my mom remarried a Canadian, and we moved to the west coast of Vancouver Island. Not long after, my sister tripped in the basement. She burned both her hands when she fell against the wood stove. She was only eleven. We all went to the hospital with her: my mom, stepdad, and me. But I sat on the curb outside, crippled by guilt because I hadn’t saved her. I hadn’t even been in the room when she fell. But that didn’t matter. She was my responsibility, and I’d failed.
When I was eighteen, I dated a man from Calgary. He was twenty-eight and about to start his own business in the oil industry. He'd fly me out for the weekend, and we'd go to the opera, or drive out to Banff to go skiing at Lake Louise. There were cars, and money and a nice house downtown. Everything with Phillip was easy. Too easy. It felt like I was cheating. My life was supposed to be lived in service, after all.
Which made me an easy target for my first husband. The PTSD-suffering Vietnam veteran. He was a man to whom I could be of service. So, I dumped the Calgary boyfriend and married the struggling veteran. Sometimes I Google Phillip. Check out the pictures of his wife and kids. Find out how much money his philanthropic charity gave away last year. And wonder why I believed easy was so wrong?
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We define service as a helpful activity, and servitude as compulsory service. The line between the two is narrow. It’s a hard edge to balance on, because we need to take care of others and we also need to protect our boundaries and look after ourselves. It’s easy to do something generous to help someone, but instead of being appreciated, your service becomes expected, and without a backward glance, you’ve slid from service into servitude.
Each time I’d been married, I’d given everything of myself because I thought taking care of my partners made me worthy. And secretly I hoped they would recognize my selfless behaviour and save me in return. It never happened, though. In real life, there’s no fairy godmother handing out castles or princes.
After my third marriage ended in divorce, I finally understood that no partner was going to reward me for giving up myself for them. It didn’t matter how much I gave. They would never repay my selfless behaviour. Why would they? Just like my father, so many years before, they had nothing to gain and everything to lose by returning my service with care of their own.
So, what happened when I stepped off the prescribed path to virtue? Turned out that my worth as a person was not based on what I could do for others. I stayed single. Sometimes I miss having a partner, but I worry that in a relationship I might give too much of myself away. Instead, I’m learning to take care of myself with the same care I once lavished on my partners. It helps that I have a job where I get to support other people. It’s rewarding. And there are still times when I need to set boundaries. I’m learning how to be of service without betraying myself, because I know I don’t need to say yes to every request to redeem myself as a person. I think my fairy godmother would be proud.
-Alison Colwell
Alison Colwell is a writer, mother, domestic violence survivor and community organizer. Her work has been published in several literary journals including: The Humber Literary Review, The Ocotillo Review, Roi Faineant Literary Press, Hippocampus Magazine, and Grist. She lives on Galiano Island, Canada. Connect with her at: alisoncolwell.com.