Service Exposing the "Other"

PROMPT
Excerpt from The community of those who have nothing in common. (1994) by Alphonso Lingis, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press. (9-11)

Rational discourse and practice makes nature a communal work and makes our own nature our own work. . . the individual of modern culture, who affirms himself with his inalienable rights and sets himself up as a legislator of his own laws, sets out to produce his individuality as that of a nature closed upon itself. In the human community he finds a work closed in itself and representative of his own thought. As the individual finds that his own thought is representative of the whole system of rational thought, he will find on his fellow man but the reflection of his own rational nature.

Before the rational community, there was the encounter with the other, the intruder. The encounter begins with the one who exposes himself to the demands and contestation of the other. Beneath the rational community, its common discourse of which each lucid mind is but the representative and its enterprises in which the efforts and passions of each are absorbed and depersonalized, is another community, the community that demands that the one who has his own communal identity, who produces his own nature, expose himself to the one with whom he as nothing in common, the stranger.

This other community is not simply absorbed into the rational community; it recurs, it troubles the rational community, as its double or its shadow.

The other community forms when one recognizes, in the face of the other, an imperative. An imperative that not only contests the common discourse and community from which he or she is excluded, but everything one has or sets out to build in common with him or her.

It is not only with one’s rational intelligence that one exposes oneself to an imperative. Our rational intelligence cannot arise without commanding our sensibility, which must collect data from the environment in comprehensible and regular ways, commanding our motor powers to measure the forces, obstacles, and causalities of the practicable field in comprehensible and regular ways, and commanding our sensibility to others to register the relations of command and obedience at work in the social field in comprehensible and regular ways. It is with the nakedness of one’s eyes that one exposes oneself to the other, with one’s hands arrested in their grip on things and turned now to the other, open-handed, and with the disarmed frailty of one’s voice troubled with the voice of another.

One exposes oneself to the other – the stranger, the destitute one, the judge – not only with one’s eyes, one’s voice and one’s silences, one’s empty hands. For the other, the stranger, turns to one, not only with his or her convictions and judgments, but also with his or her frailty, susceptibility, mortality.”

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RESPONSE
One of my clients in Indianapolis was a new charter school. Their building was not quite ready for the new school year so they asked my organization to help provide team development for their incoming class of 30 Freshman students. I planned some content for the time as well as brought in a few nonprofit organizations to provide ropes course facilitation as well as coordinate community service projects. One of the smaller groups of students ended up at a local thrift store sorting clothes, cleaning the facility and helping with a small construction project. They worked alongside the employees of the store and over the day began to build relationships with them. At the end of the day, Michael, the store manager, asked if he could have a moment to thank the students for their work and share a story. I instantly said yes.

Michael was a handsome mid-aged black man with a personality that instantly pulled you in. He began the his story…sharing that he came from a upper middle class family where both his mother and father had college degrees and professional jobs. He had the ideal upbringing and was the quarterback of his high school football team. He went to college on a full ride. He had everything he needed…yet found himself wanting more once he graduated. He began experimenting with drugs and became addicted. Addicted to the point he ruined his friend and family relationships from stealing and letting people down. After not even a year of drug use, he was homeless. Eventually, he found his way to the shelter that is supported by the thrift store. The shelter and its staff supported him through rehab and helped him rebuild his life. He closed by saying that the shelter had saved his life. He thanked the students for helping save lives like his through their volunteer work…and warned them to never take what they do have for granted. The room—once filled with the adolescent posturing of high school Freshman—was silent.

Most of the students in this school came from families not as well off as Michael’s. There faces, comments on the bus ride home, and sharing with other students the next day was by far one of the most incredible impacts I have ever witnessed. It could never have been planned. It was the raw human experience meeting open hearts and minds at just the right time. I wasn’t moved by tears that day as I have been most other times I have felt moved or touched by the “other.” But it was definitely there.

I write this during my monthly evening volunteering at the homeless shelter. I have met and had conversations with many of the guests…and know they each have their story as did Michael. I wish for each of them the chance to have their story known and honored.