Rachel Naomi Remen wrote an essay called In the Service of Life for the Noetic Sciences Review back in the Spring of 1996. She wrote
When I fix a person, I perceive them as broken, and their brokenness requires me to act. When I fix, I do not see the wholeness in the other person or trust the integrity of the life in them.
Helping someone can create a feeling of indebtedness, increasing the distance between the person in need and the person doing the helping. Some people have a difficult time being “helped,” because they want to be able to provide something in return.
She also said that:
Service rests on the basic premise that the nature of life is sacred, that life is sacred, that life is a holy mystery which has an unknown purpose. When we serve, we know that we belong to life and to that purpose. Fundamentally, helping, fixing, and service are ways of seeing life. When you help you see life as weak, when you fix, you see life as broken. When you serve, you see life as whole. For the perspective of service, we are all connected: All suffering is like my suffering and all joy is like my joy. The impulse to serve emerges naturally and inevitably from this way of seeing.
Fixing and helping can leave the other person feel wounded. Only service heals.
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