As a minister, my life is fundamentally dedicated to "being of service" to others.
However, you don't have to be a priest to be of service to people; the be oriented towards generosity of time and spirit towards others. A lot of people are "helpers" by nature, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that!
I do get a fair number of counseling clients who come to me with the issue that they are simply exhausted, as a result of their giving natures and evident selflessness.
"I give and I give and I give and I'm just to tired to take it anymore!"
Clearly, something is out of balance. In most cases, we are simply talking about poorly defined personal boundaries... people who agree to take on more and more things (to do for others) when their plates are already full.
At that point, it seems like there is very little joy in giving... just layers of frustration.
I call that — perhaps not very charitably — "Martyring yourself on the altar of selflessness."
When I ask these clients to explain how they ended up in this predicament, I have noticed that their language is often full of "absolute" statements such as "I HAVE to do this" and "I HAVE to help this person!"
Truth is... no you don't. You choose to help them, but you don't have to help them.
What many find hard to believe is that many times a person's "selflessness" can actually turn out to be self serving. We do all these many things that are "of service" as a way to place hardship on ourselves, thereby opening the door to a strange and slightly twisted kind of "virtue signaling" centered on "look how much I am sacrificing myself and my own needs in order to be of selfless service!"
Alas, there's nothing particularly noble about that because it's very self oriented, not really service oriented. When we are authentically of service, giving should be a joy, for its own sake!
It would be easy to argue that "all giving is GOOD giving," but it's important to understand our — and other people's — deeper motivations. So take a good long look inside yourself, next time you feel inclined to point out just HOW MUCH you are giving to others...
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