fanny pax and the ethic of service

as i was standing in the station, waiting for my train to come back to the house, i noticed a flash. a run-of-the-mill DC tourist: i heart DC t-shirt, check. digital camera, check. bag with smithsonian logo containing something overpriced, check. fanny pack, check.

it was this digital camera that caused the flash that made me notice her. it’s the height of tourist season in DC. the school children have finished their state tests, so the schools have to figure out how to make sure they don’t tear down the walls for the month-and-a-half of not-much-to-do until they’ve done their 180 days. so, they come to DC wearing matching t-shirts. they sort of fade into the background.

but this one, i noticed. she was of the retiree flavor of DC tourist, taking a photo of the bustling l’enfant metro station. i sort of mentally rolled my eyes over the idea that someone would consider a grimy subway station a kodak moment, but then i realized something.

i’m in her picture. some day i might be in her scrapbook, on her computer desktop, on her bedside table.

how many hundreds, even thousands, of people look at me everyday and smile, daydream about a happy memory, despair over a sad one. never really noticing me, but still i’m there. the often-unknowing interloper in their family photo with cherry blossoms, the young couple sitting at the table beside their 45th birthday party.

it’s impossible to know. but it really made me wonder at the number of people’s lives that i touch every single day. it totally creeped me out. it made the interdependent web of all existence very tangible, and, at first, i liked the concept better when it was totally intellectual about a butterfly flapping its wings in mexico and eating locally grown foods.

because now it’s making me think about all the other people who have drank out of the wine glass i’m holding at a restaurant. and the other people who used the fork i’m holding.

it was a lot like the feeling i get when i think of someone using my toothbrush. i’m not even okay with my flame using my toothbrush. and we totally make out. irrational self-directed eye roll.

i still am working on the violated toothbrush/other people’s tooth slime thing. but as i sat with it, i started to think about the non-tooth-slime related stuff. and how truly magical that web is when you let it into your life.

the tiny acts — the good turns — that are part of my unconscious mind, that i do mindlessly every day. holding the door for the person behind me, letting a pregnant woman have my seat on the train, offering directions to clueless tourists, hanging up the birthday sign at work, making sure a sick friend didn’t have to cook for her kid, tipping well, picking up litter that isn’t mine, saying “thank you.” you know, the golden rule stuff.

i do bigger things too, when i am able to. things that i let myself call Service in my mind. tutoring an innercity kid, giving away 5 percent of what i make, participating in chesapeake bay clean-up day. these things are part of that web also.

but something in the back of my brain — the part that is really me, not who i think i am — draws me to those good turns as the really good stuff. that really respecting the web is about being in the background of someone else’s family photos. not getting a service award, your picture in the newsletter or even a “thank you.” doing it just because you need to.

this generosity of spirit is what living with an ethic of service really is. and it is the first step toward being the people the world needs.