The Power of Nobody

What Ms. Vanessa taught me about the importance of
putting down my identity and picking up a plate

I’ve started volunteering at a resident center here in Houston. The women and families living there have experienced abuse, neglect, addiction, homelessness. The community gives them a safe place to stay for a time and resources to help them move forward in their lives.

I signed up for the lunch shift thinking it would be a good way to connect to and learn from a population with whom I normally do not interact – a population around whom I find myself unsure and uncomfortable.

It’s easy to tell myself to forge deeper connections with others when the others are mostly like me. I know nothing about the path these women have walked – I’ve never experienced any of the hardships they have faced. Am I uncomfortable because I feel sorry for them or because I judge them for not having their lives in better order? Possibly. More likely it’s because I feel more acutely my position of privilege and my total lack of understanding about their circumstances. And that leads to my complete uncertainty about what to say or do.

So I will make myself useful to these women by serving them food. After all, I love to cook for my own family and friends. This feels like familiar territory where it will be easy for me to be present, listening and learning. I fully expected my first lunch shift to blossom with meaningful conversations and exchanges of heartfelt sincerity. I would listen to them, gain perspective, be changed by the experience. I would be a somebody with whom these women would want to connect.

The reality? I wasn’t somebody to them. I am, in fact, nobody.

My experience started with me being told to wait at a cafeteria table for the lunch service to begin. Some of the residents sat nearby eating an early meal before they helped in the kitchen. Some of them glanced my way without even seeing me. None of them spoke to me.

Ms. Vanessa runs the kitchen and eventually called me back behind the counter to wash my hands and don my blue apron, hairnet and gloves. I introduced myself. Now I was “Amber” but only to Ms. Vanessa and only as long as it took her to show me where to place the cornbread next to the beans and rice and how much salad to dole out. Then I was back to being nobody, quickly filling plates and handing them over to the ladies in line with a smile and as much courtesy as I could cram into, “Here you go.” and “My pleasure.”

When lunch service finished, Ms. Vanessa told me to spray and wipe down the counter, then sweep and mop the floor. She showed me where to drop my apron in the laundry room basket on my way out. I asked if I could help with anything else, and she said that was it.

“I hope I didn’t work you too hard,” she added with a smile. I assured her she did not. “Good, because I want you to come back.” And then she went on to wash dishes and start prepping food for the dinner meal. That really was it. No transcendent moment of powerful, life-changing enlightenment. Just the hope that I come back to do it again.

So, I did. For my next shift, we served chili hot dogs with chips and ice cream. Ms. Vanessa greeted me warmly. “You came back, Ms. Amber.” I felt like somebody briefly. Then back to nobody, just the woman on bun and plate duty at the front of the line.

I bring no special skills to this job, a reality that became clear as this lunch service progressed. I kept grabbing conjoined plates that needed separating. The buns stuck together like plastic produce bags – impossible to find the seam or get a thumb in to pry them open. I broke a sweat trying to wrangle everything as the pressure of the hungry line built.

None of my years leading teams and departments at a large hospital system mattered to those buns. None of my editing, wordsmithing or creative powers put food on plates any faster. None of the fancy dinner parties I’ve successfully thrown had any bearing on the chili hot dog lunch line. All the trappings of my “somebody” identity made no difference to the need at hand.

Despite the stubborn baked goods and tricky plastics, however, everybody got a meal, and we finished lunch service on time. I got a high five from Ms. Vanessa as I went to get the mop. I never felt so good about being on a team where I’m completely unknown, where there legitimately is no “I” in team.

The food gets made and served whether I show up or not. But I know that showing up matters. I know I need to keep coming back as a nobody to this community of nobodies. Maybe it’s changing me. The experience forces me to put down my identity and all my expectations about myself to just be here and now, doing the work in front of me.

For years, my ego told me I had to have my own special purpose to do my part. But more and more, I see that purpose is actually shared and much bigger than any one somebody. At lunchtime at the center, we’re all the same – pairs of hands in disposable gloves, heads crowned in black hairnets, bodies in constant, companionable motion feeding other bodies in need. I do the work, and I see how every loving action adds to our collective momentum, regardless of who we are as separate somebodies.

The world tells us we need to be somebody to make a difference. But what if we are at our most powerful when we are in fact nobody?

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