How Can I Help?: Stories and Reflections on Service

by Ram Dass

A coffeehouse. An encampment. A free zone for whoever shows up. We’re an environment, not an argument for social change. Our aim is to awaken together and see what follows, not to manipulate one another into this action or that. We do so by recognizing the integrity of one another’s experience. “What have you been through? What did it look like to you?” The most effective political action often grows out of telling one another our stories. We’re out to share not to convince; action follows. So two policemen, talking off-duty, discover they both feel uncomfortable with racist jokes at the station; they agree to call people on them from now on. A group of women employees, chatting at lunch, find out they’ve all been sexually harassed by men with power over their jobs; they’ll raise the issue at the next union meeting. Parallels of private experience become the ground for common initiative. What’s been dealt with in solitude becomes the basis for solidarity.