How Can I Help???

I don't know how many times I have stated that my passion is to help others. I have mentioned this several times in class, probably to all of my friends, and wrote an entire essay over how my desire to do whatever is necessary to help those in need started at a young age. Even though it is my biggest passion, it also is a part of my biggest fear, not being good enough. Since we have been focusing on our passions, I began to sit back and think just how do I go about helping others. Am I adequate enough in executing my passion? Do I do everything I can and not stop until their problem is solved? Or do I go just far enough to where my own life isn't affected in a negative way by their problems? My biggest fear is not being able to solve someone's problem and not being able to essentially make them stop suffering.

Now, I know that no one is perfect, which makes me feel at ease when I think about not fully being there for someone. This fear of mine actually drives me to make sure that I do all that I can for someone. It is like a bad nightmare that surrounds your thoughts and makes you afraid to fall back asleep in fear that your bad dream will just pick up where it left off. (The image shows a nightmare that is bound to stick with you for a couple of days. Observe how there is a cloud like presence that surrounds the bed. It would be very difficult to forget such an image immediately.) It is like that nightmare that I am always surrounded, mentally, with the thought of failing someone else. Leaving them to fend for themselves. I guess in a way I am an enabler; I would rather solve their problem than let them go through the struggles of finding a solution for themselves. Being an enabler in this situation is not all bad to me. It is unlike the mother who baby fies her son to the extent he is incapable of developing into a real man; a man that is able to take care of himself and not rely on his mother or another woman to take care of him. Helping others, I honestly believe, is not a true case of enabling because you are doing what is exactly stated; you are helping them figure out the situation they are in.

"There's one thing I've learned in twenty-five years or so of political organizing: People don't like to be 'should' upon. They'd rather discover than be told." (Dass, 157)

This reminds me of the past five years of life, the phases of high school and the transition to college. I would constantly clash with my mother over just about everything; I always saw or found a loop hole in her way of doing things and wanted to do them my way. Naturally, most of the time she was right but I had to discover things on my own. There were some aspects of life that my mother never forced upon me; one of those being religion. Maybe it was the fact that my mother worked most Sunday mornings leaving my siblings and me with the choice of going to church with friends or other family members. She did not force us into a certain religion possibly because she was forced into a religion when she was growing up. This path to my own self-discovery was recently discussed on a drive back to Austin. I expressed my desire to become baptized Catholic in the near future, and she just simply said "she was very proud and happy that I found a religion to my liking" and that she would definitely be there when I was baptized. She also went on to explain that the reason she did not force religion upon us at a young age was because she wanted us to personally find a religion that best suited us on an individual level. (The image shows the major religions that exists in the world today. My mother allowed me to pick whichever one I wanted to without the influence of her or anyone else.) As stated before, she did not make us go to a particular church every Sunday; she just instilled the will of God and Jesus Christ into us and taught us how to be appreciative and thankful of a higher being. Through this strategy my mother helped find my own religion, not necessarily the religion she believes in.

The process of discovering instead of being "should upon" became the best way I learn and is becoming a key component when I am helping others. "So, at some level, we care with all our heart...and then we finally let go" (Dass, 210). It is important to help others, but at the same time we have to teach others how to care for themselves. It is not always a guarantee that there will be a person close by to help you all of the time. I have experienced moments where I desperately needed someone to be there, but there was no one there. In the end, I became stronger because even though I was in a rough situation, I was able to deal with it and move on. Having experienced moments of overcoming obstacles alone, I am able to show others that it is possible to get passed what they are going through because not only are they dealing with, but I am too. I surrender myself to them and provide two thinking heads instead of one.

(The image shows the "How can I help?" novel we have based two discussions over. It discusses how we can do the simplest and most fulfilling task, helping others.)


"How can I help?" Ram Dass and Paul Gorman provide an answer to this tough question. "We can, of course, help through all that we do. But at the deepest level we help through who we are." (Dass, 227). The solution to the question is not hard to grasp; in fact, it seems like an easy solution to the problem of "How can [we] help?" Developing into good citizens and neighbors is the answer. We can unknowingly help someone else by just smiling at them and saying a kind "hello." Those two acts of kindness can work wonders in our world. The fast paced life we live comes with tons of stress; some handle stress in different ways than others. Just smiling at someone can brighten up their day and show that there is hope for a happier tomorrow. We owe it to each other to just be kind. No one has the perfect life. We all go through struggles, which makes us so much alike. It takes a couple of moments out of your life to help someone; do it because you will need that help someday.