Helping and being helped is not always as straight forward, altruistic, noble or wise as it seems and can get pathological in a blink of an eye. There are genuine moments when we all might use a helping hand or people around us who sincerely need help because of their predicament, circumstance or lack of some resource or information. But there are moments when help is something quite different.

It can easily become an empty gesture to make ourselves feel better, to comfort ourselves or others as an excuse for not acting and allowing things to stay the same, as a futile action that will accomplish nothing, a pro forma thing. When we ask for help it has to be genuine. We need to actually want to receive it and use the capital that came to us in whatever form. It is not a pardon to not have to put in the work, not a method to leach of someone else’s work or kindness, not a card blanche with no strings attached or a renunciation of responsibility in the matter. We cannot see help as a way to let someone take over the wheel or an excuse to kick back and do nothing because it’s being handled for us nor does it give us the prerogative to confirm that we are innocent victims through whining and acting helpless.

Victimhood is a good segway to the other side of the coin – helping others. Real genuine help does not come from pity and viewing others as victims that had nothing to do with the situation they are in. This would deny any agency they might have had, any role they played in the unfolding of a story which makes it very unlikely that their agency now or in the future would make any difference, allowing them therefore to be victims of random events ad infinitum. Before deciding to help, make sure you’re not doing it to satisfy your own need for grandeur, superiority, a messianic complex in which you’re here as a saviour or to snuff out some gnawing feeling about not sweeping in front of your own doorstep first. Make sure that you’re not just entering a roleplay, a pretend world, where you pretend to help with meaningless and inconsequential gestures, while the other pretends they want to change, work on it or have the problem solved at all. It’s a double win – you get an illusion that you’re doing something about it which relieves the guilt and the bonus of attention form the one who wants to help or uses the semblance of help.

Help is a jumping board but the landing is up to us. There will be no cushions. When you ask for help mean it. When you offer help mean it and makes sure you can back it up with the commitment help demands on both ends – giving and receiving alike. If you’re going to be there, be there all the way. If you ask for help be ready to work to make it count. Truth, although almost as a rule harder, is far better than fairy tales and false promises and it is much healthier to honestly express constructive opposition than to be an enabler of a never ending destructive loop. Pity doesn’t equal empathy. The road to hell is, after all, paved with good intentions.