No shame in letting others give us a hand sometimes
“Just read your column,” a reader wrote.
The Oct. 28 column focused on how those of us who embrace ministry of compassion can wear ourselves out if we try to take on assignments we were not meant to take on; about how we need to be still and be aware of the cases we are supposed to help with, and be aware of the cases we’re supposed to let someone else handle.
The reader brought up an additional aspect of the whole “doing good to others” pastime.
“I think maybe sometimes we are also a recipient and vehicle of blessing when we allow ourselves to be the one who gets taken care of ... letting ourselves be the child. Or sometimes, even, letting ourselves be the one to ask for help, and [letting] someone else be a helper. It blesses them. It can feel humiliating to us. But it shouldn’t. We sure wouldn’t want the ones we help to feel humiliated. Ideally, both parties feel grateful.”
Good point. It can be tough to ask for, or accept, help. So many of us are afraid of people knowing our business and putting it out in the street. Others of us just don’t want to appear weak and would, as my reader puts it, feel humiliated to be the recipient of a helping hand. Yet others fear being rejected, judged or “too much of a bother.” And there are those of us who simply want to remain in denial about our need for help.
But life is a two-parter. We are all meant to lend help and we all need help sometimes. We’re in an interdependent society and we’re all meant to be a blessing — at times designated by the Creator — by lending help. Lending the help is its own reward in that we’re blessed to be a blessing. Ideally, we receive the humble satisfaction that we have fulfilled a purpose. The one receiving help gets the satisfaction of being helped and fulfilling the helper’s assignment.
So if we need help and refuse it, we’re messing the whole dang thing up.
“We ignore the fact that we are social beings who need to cooperate with one another in order to ensure that we thrive,” according to an article at Wikihow.com. And I like the quotation by Mahatma Gandhi: “Interdependence is and ought to be as much the ideal of man as self-sufficiency. Man is a social being. Without interrelation with society he cannot realize his oneness with the universe or suppress his egotism. His social interdependence enables him to test his faith and to prove himself on the touchstone of reality.”
Setting aside any reaction to our need for help, we shouldn’t feel ashamed of that need. Even in our need, we are of value. When we accept help from someone, we are helping them to find value in the journey, rather than just rolling their eyes and asking, “Are we there yet?” Recipients of help can, in addition, find comfort in the prospect of a future opportunity to be on the giving end.
Of course we have to beware of things getting offbalance. Just as there exist those who give help only to feed their egos and get drunk from the wine of the recipients’ gratitude, there exist knuckleheads who are too lazy to help themselves; too willing to be dependent on others; or are downright con artists who prey on the compassionate (“You should want to help me! I’m actually doing you a favor. It blesses you”).
Which goes back to the point I made in the previous column. When we are asked for help, it’s not wrong to pause and vet those requests with the Creator. Our intuition. That still, small voice. That dossier dug up by the private detective we hired (just kidding, sort of). The person in need may simply be someone else’s blessing.
Whatever the particular case ... we’re all family. And we all need each other, one way or another.