Understanding My Place
After
Thursday’s discussion about helping and the role of helpers and the helped, I left
class feeling somewhat confused and unsure of what I wanted to do with my life.
I know I want to help, but I’m not sure how to step beyond the roles of helper
and helped. Moreover, I’m still uncertain if I can ever shed my self-image. I
think it is something that is always a part of us. In brainstorming for my role
model paper (which I still have to write), I thought of several people wealthy
people who are known for being charitable—Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, John D.
Rockefeller, Warren Buffet, etc.. For my paper, I know
I want to write about someone who has been successful in the business industry
and turned around to do good with that money. However,
I’m not sure how that aligns with Dass’ idea of
compassion and helping.
I wrote in my passion paper that my desire is to do something important in my life, to really make a positive impact on the world. However, at the time of this post, I’m not certain if this idea conflicts with what Dass talks about self image. For me, the sense of accomplishment or achievement from doing something good is an amazing feeling. However, Dass writes, “The self-image is very compelling. After all, we like to see ourselves as useful and compassionate. It feels good to be able to offer care to one another….we have a personal history to make sense of, a story line we’re trying to write: “This Is Your Life” (Dass 133). I feel that I have to feel at peace with myself in however I choose to help others. It does feel good to help others, but I agree with Dass that I have to help for the right reasons. It should not all be for myself and to say to myself that I’ve helped. Switchfoot sings a song called “This Is Your Life.” The chorus goes:
“this is your life, are you who you want to be
this is your life, are you who you want to be
this is your life, is it everything you dreamed that it would be
when the world was younger and you had everything to lose”
On Friday, I had a whole left-over cake from the Business
Honors Symposium. I had intended to give the cake to the homeless along the
drag. Across from Dobie Mall, there were two homeless
men who already had a box of pizza with them. I offered them some 
cake,
and they kindly refused the cake and told me to give it to some other people who
didn’t already have something to eat. For me, that was amazing and made me feel
so little in relation to them. Here they were, hungry and cold,
and they turned down a slice of cake because they already had some food.
Unfortunately, there were no other homeless 
men on the Drag
that afternoon, so the cake still currently sits in my fridge. In any case,
this event made me more self-conscious of helping. Dass
talks about this idea of independence and helping. I choose myself to take the
left-over cake from the business event and attempt to feel homeless people.
However, I felt at the same time that I was “[shunning] helplessness, and when
[facing] it, bemoan [my] fate… In our society the most helpless among us are
often consigned to a separate class: ghettos, “golden age” communities,
hospitals, wards. They’re put or kept somewhere. The rest of us are freerer not to face what they represent” (Dass 135). This event has been the first time I have really
spoken to a homeless person face to face by myself. It was strange at the same
interesting.
Compassion is a very interesting subject. I look forward to perhaps doing a service project with our world lit class.