To Give Without Giving Yourself Up

Public service is spoken of with reverence, yet practised with contradiction. Politics, bureaucracy, and government are too often projected as ladders to power and privilege, not as platforms of service. And when we do talk of service, it is almost always framed as sacrifice.

For generations, our imagination of the “ideal servant of the people” has been shaped by the figure of the renunciant. The celibate monk, the austere Gandhian, the missionary who leaves behind family ties, they all been held up as the gold standard of selflessness. Gandhi parted ways with his family, Mother Teresa built her life around renunciation, and more recently, our Prime Minister, his celibacy undoubtedly adds to his credibility. We have been conditioned to believe that only those who have given up everything can be trusted to give to others.

There is comfort in this idea. A leader without attachments seems incorruptible, free from temptations of wealth or family obligation. But doesn’t this stereotype also rob politics of vitality? Doesn’t it quietly exclude the middle class, the people with spouses, children, and everyday responsibilities, from even imagining themselves in service? It leaves us with a troubling choice: either you have nothing to hold you back and so you can serve, or you have people to care for and so you are disqualified.

This mindset narrows service into an exclusive calling, possible only for saints or for opportunists. And in other arms of government, bureaucracy, administration, the services, the same distortion persists. Instead of being channels of social good, these positions are too often treated as rewards, shields of privilege, or tickets to rise above the very citizens once resented. In such cases, the word service becomes little more than a hollow slogan, no different from corporate work except cloaked in the language of duty.

But why must service demand deprivation? Why must giving always mean giving up? A teacher with children of her own still shapes the lives of countless others. Why then is politics or governance held to a harsher, almost inhuman standard?

Perhaps we have mistaken symbols for substance. Renunciation can inspire, yes, but it is not the essence of service. True service is not self-erasure, but self-extension. It is not measured by how much one has lost, but by how much one is willing to share.

Some of the leaders of our time have not hidden their families; they have embraced them. Barack Obama, for instance, often spoke of fatherhood as central to his understanding of responsibility. His public service did not shrink because he had a family; if anything, his attachments grounded him, made him more relatable, and reminded the citizens that service is not only the work of saints, but of ordinary people who carry love and duty in both public and private life.

If we are to reclaim the soul of governance, we must rewrite its story. Service is not sainthood. It does not require abandoning joy, family, or comfort. It calls for honesty, accountability, and care. It asks us to carry our attachments and still choose to give.

Because in the end, people do not need saints, they need servants. Not figures who have erased themselves, but humans who live fully, love deeply, and still choose to give generously. The paradox of service is not that you must give yourself up to give, but that you can bring your whole self, your strengths, your flaws, your bonds, into what you offer. And perhaps that is the most human, and the most hopeful, form of service of all.

Sadly, this is also the hidden tragedy. For generations, the family man has been told that politics is not his game, that responsibility ties him down, that service requires a life of endless dedication and renunciation. And who does this exclusion serve? It shuts out precisely the middle class, the class that carries both hunger and discipline, the power to work hard and the desire to rise. What better way to keep them away from the corridors of decision-making than to convince them they do not belong? And so we must ask: was sacrifice glorified only so that service could remain the privilege of the few?