Helping in balance
Help, only four letters, a seemingly simple word. Its short length and frequent usage have made this short english word identifiable to most foreing languages. This simple word holds so much power because it refers to and identifies a relationship between two beings. Expectations attached to it differ between culture space and time, and hence its different shades and nuances. Yet our common understanding is that helping is good and not helping is bad.
One time while I lived in Tokyo, I got off the subway and was not sure which exit would be the correct one to take in order to reach my destination. I stood there for sometime looking at the big map which (in Japanese of course) detailed all the streets and buildings above us. I must have looked very confused as a shop keeper left his stand and approached me to offer his help. After exchanging smiles and pointing to the map and my small piece of paper, he understood where I wanted to go and also why I could not make out which way would be the correct one. My first thought was, “what a nice person” but what happened next blew me away. He went back to his stand, closed it up and walked me all the way to my exit. I had many such experiences in Japan and wondered if as a people they were just “nicer”? I knew this not to be true, yet it is undeniable that this trait is part of their culture. The same way that when you visit someone in Argentina you will always be invited in for a coffee or glass of wine. The same way that a handshake in Germany is stronger than a signed contract.
Help is a word which each culture and religion has its own spoken or unspoken mandates for. As Catholics we are taught we need to be “nice”, we need to help and even sacrifice ourselves for others. In my subway story, this kind Japanese man probably also felt it was his duty to help a lost westerner. Does that cultural pressure make us less “nice” because it sets an expectation and we feel bad when we don’t do it? What if helping had nothing to do with being nice and more to do with understanding that balance in ourselves and in relationship with others?
There is a very interesting and unhealthy dynamic that can be seen when between two adults when there is an imbalance between giving and receiving. The person who gives too much becomes “bigger” and receiver becomes “smaller”. If instead help is just enough in order for the other person to be able to help themselves, and given not because we want to be “nice” but because we have something to share. Then in the exchange, we are no better than the person we are helping, and the relationship mantains its balance, the other person mantains their “greatness”.
Our own discomfort might also be a reason for an imbalance in helping. This happens when we help out of our own discomfort, without the other person asking for our help. This need to “save’ the other person does not make us “nice”. When we do this most of the time we encounter pushback and many people get their feelings hurt because they were just trying to be “nice”. Helping someone who did not ask for help, who is not able to accept our help, is not help, it is invasive. Yet some of us who have a difficult time watching others suffer, find this so difficult to do. We need to begin to learn that love and help sometimes means complete respect for the other person’s path and their own ways of doing things and their own timing.
In that beautiful exchange in the subway station in Tokyo, my smile was my opening for help, my willingness to follow an unknown man was also my acknowledgement that I needed and accepted his help. Any other exchange would have involved an imbalance. I knew I could use help, his stand was quiet that morning and he knew closing it for five minutes would not change his day. I am sure he felt happiness for doing a good deed that morning and his help saved me from wandering around Tokyo. Balance. That is the strength of that short word HELP. He offered something he had (time, knowledge, quiet morning) and I asked for what I needed only (being pointed in the right direction). Had I asked for more, there would have been an imbalance. Had he left his busy stand to help me, there would have been an imbalance. When that happens then this short word “help” becomes heavy instead of life giving. If we are honest with ourselves, we will always know whether our help comes from a balanced place of sharing the gifts we have, or from a place of imbalance and sacrifice. If we help in a balanced way, giving what we have and only what the other person needs, then the exchange will help both sides grow.