Help

There is a loved one in my life who always looks for help. Hardly asks for it overtly, but looks for it and silently pleads for it. Yet when help is offered, usually rejects it. What is it that drives us to ask for help and then slap it away? It really does start early. I see my granddaughter get upset about something, cry for Mom and then hit her mom when her mom reaches out to her. A drowning person will sometimes drown the person trying to rescue them. Why?

I looked up help in the dictionary and it was interesting what I found. There are lots of definitions for help, especially because it is both a noun and a verb. I found this as part of the definitions:

Synonyms: help, aid, assist, succor
These verbs mean to contribute to the fulfillment of a need, the furtherance of an effort, or the achievement of a purpose or end. Help and aid, the most general, are frequently interchangeable: a medication that helps (or aids) the digestion.
Help, however, sometimes conveys a stronger suggestion of effectual action: I'll help you move the piano.
Assist usually implies making a secondary contribution or acting as a subordinate: Apprentices assisted the chef in preparing the banquet.
Succor refers to going to the relief of one in want, difficulty, or distress: "Mr. Harding thought . . . of the worn-out, aged men he had succored" Anthony Trollope. See Also Synonyms at improve.

Usage Note: Many people commonly use help in the sense conveyed in the sentence Don't change it any more than you can help (that is, "any more than you have to"). Some grammarians condemn this usage on the grounds that help in this sense means "avoid" and therefore logically requires a negative. But the expression is a well-established idiom.

The dictionary actually references a usage of the word that is contrary to the intent of the word! And it is so commonly used that it has to appear in the dictionary!

Thinking further on this, should we help others if they ask? What should we do if they ask and reject help? Should we only offer help to those who use it? How do we know they will take the help, rather than reject it? What happens to us as individuals when we stop offering help? Lots of philosophical questions. Actually they aren't philosophical, but rather pragmatic questions. We are in this situation every day and need to figure out the answer for ourselves. Ever hold a door for someone who either ignores you or is actually rude to you? It happens all the time!

I think, for myself, I need to offer people help. First, however, I need to be better at discerning whether they are verbally, or nonverbally asking for help, rather than a situation where I decide they need help. When I offer help to those I decide need help, I am doing that out of my own ego, not because they have a need there!

If they are asking for help, I want to offer it and I should! It enriches them to get help, and I believe it enriches me as well. To me, help in the right situation is positive energy, and as you have read in past blogs, getting more positive energy in my life is a goal! But what happens in the case when they ask and then reject help. I guess that if I can offer something that is rejected, and not be hurt by the rejection, then there is nothing lost. There is no more negative energy than in the beginning, and the effort to create a positive experience was still an opportunity.

If, however, repeat rejections cause me to feel hurt or resentful, then I am becoming a negative myself by continuing to offer help. I must not do that. It is just making things worse! I must start practicing how and when I offer help.

• Can I offer help to this person?
• Are they asking?
• Have they asked and rejected help before?
  
• If they don't take the help, will I be hurt or resentful by the rejection?

I really do want to better both the world and my relationship with it. I am looking for all of those areas where that negative juju creeps in, or I invite it in. I think the area of help is one of those places where I must be more discerning if I wish to continue on the path I set for myself. Make sure the help I offer is truly of help to someone or something: the person, me, or the world!

There is so much work I need to do for myself! But I believe that this exercise of writing on help has actually helped me put perspective on how to move forward with the loved one with the "help" issues! Thank you ME!

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