Service to others is a life well-lived?
Caterina Fake has been reading a book about the life of the woman who took care of Proust while he wrote his great novel. She is shocked at how one of the book reviewers described the biography:
“Suicidal” “monstrous” “cold-blood” “revulsion” “deforming” “madman” — wow. I was reading it as a study in devotion, service and sacrifice. I tried to figure out where such revulsion had come from, and it seemed to me that people in Western society have a horror of selflessness, and what they perceive of as subordination and subservience. In some ways this book was a perfect and remarkable complement and contrast to the expendable warrior theme of my prior post on Dogfights and Gameness with their triumphs and heroics — here was a quiet, modest life, lived in the service of another. She took pleasure in warming Proust’s bathwater to the perfect temperature, fixing his coffee just so, and knowing exactly which hat he wore on which occasion.
How do you decide what you should devote your life to? Why would this reviewer feel such disgust at Albaret’s chosen path?