Help!

Help Me If You Can!

His most debilitating character flaw was an overriding inability to ask for help. It was a radical sense of independence, bordering on fear of being dependent on anyone for anything. After all, dependence is a sign of weakness so you could think of this condition as a bad case of testosterone fever, egocentrism, or as some would say, pridefulness, resulting in impotence, an inability to multiply oneself. It was the feeling that if there was a job to be done, work to accomplish, or a challenge to be met, that he’d do it, he’s accomplish it, and he’d meet it without needing to ask for anyone’s help.

In the words of John Lennon, his favorite Beatle, “When I was younger, so much younger than today, I never needed anybody’s help in any way.”

He Was Disconnected
He was in this sense disconnected from the world and the people who surrounded him. He suffered from a level of self reliance (a distrust of others) that cut him off, alienated him, and radically minimized his own ability to do what he passionately wanted most to do…help others to help themselves. He was a rock, he was an island, and ironically he was unable to give help to others because he was unwilling, and so unable to ask for or receive any help himself.

What He’d Failed To Understand
What he failed to understand was the reality that being able to give help goes hand in hand with the ability to ask for help and actually receive it. When you close your door to one, you also close it to the other. In Lennon’s words, “But now these days are gone I’m not so self-assured. Now I find I changed my mind, I’ve opened up the door.”

The trick, as he was about to learn, is to open the door, to reconnect, and to recognize that nobody in this world is or ever has been completely self-reliant. In one sense, those who seem to be the most independent are the ones who ask for, and then receive the most help from others.

Sinking In A Sea Of Independence“
How ironic,” he thought to himself. “How incredibly ironic. And why has it taken so long for me to see this? Maybe it was because I refused (or was afraid) to look,” he answered to himself. But the fact was, he was sinking in an infinite sea of independence and suddenly found that he needed somebody to throw him a life-line, somebody to help!

What he suddenly was coming to recognize (at least he was catching the initial glimpses of) was that it’s not so much independence, but disconnectedness that’s the true sign of weakness, impotence, resulting in the inability to multiply oneself. On the other hand, when you connect, you can multiply yourself infinitely, even miraculously.

The Challenge
The question at this point was, how was he going to go about making a change in his life? How was he going to detonate the wall that he’d constructed between himself and other people? How would he go about swallowing his pride, and admitting to other humans that he himself needed help, and that he really isn’t this totally self reliant, self contained, self-absorbed vessel that he had always portrayed himself to be? That was the challenge that was staring him right between the eyes. “I’m going to need some help with this,” he thought to himself smiling.

Despite Being Armed…
Despite being armed with the greatest idea of the 21st century, he’d generated little interest and no real buy in. As he percolated on this dilemma he thought of the classic Stone Soup fairly tale that his Mom used to read him decades before (insert) and the Sermon on the Mount where Christ fed the masses, starting with only 12 loaves of bread, and finishing with lots more at the end (insert). In both cases, the hero asked for help and had miraculously received it.

Lennon’s haunting lyrics came echoing back again and again. “Help me if you can I’m feeling down. And I do appreciate your being ‘round. Help me get my feet back on the ground. Won’t you please, please help me?”