We Must All Learn To Help Those Who Need It

While there are exceptions among us, most people do not understand the necessity of helping others until they themselves experience the pain, disappointment or loss that makes them yearn for it.

In a sense, this article won’t be able to truly get the reader to understand, because it is intellectual, not a real thing in the reader’s life. We can take in a message and “get it,” but we don’t really recognize the urgency until the message needs to be applied in our lives.

It’s easy to brush this off as treacly cliches during period of your life where you aren’t suffering or don’t feel the need for help. But there comes a point in everyone’s life where they wish someone can help them, or at least be a steady port in the storm of their life.

Try to imagine what your feeling would be if or when you get to that point in your life. Or if you already have gotten to that point and passed it, try to imagine how you felt at your lowest. The support you would want from others at that point is the support you should look to give to others.

You can only give that support if you recognize, or pick up the possibility of, someone going through a rough time. This is obviously easier said than done, and you are very likely to miss the signs at some, or many, points. But being aware of this is a good way to go about your life.

Of course, for anyone to get out of the challenges that they are in and have a happy, fulfilled life, they have to do the work themselves. No amount of empathy or profound awareness of the plight of others will give all people the life that they strive for, unless the people do the work themselves. The call to do more to help others should not be mistaken as the key to fix the struggles we all face.

But what a more empathetic group of people, who put that empathy into practice can do is help people get to the road to their best selves that they have inside them, but need a push to find.

It is the same thing when looking for the best system of government. In the end, you are the person who is always with you, who will decide how your life goes. Even the nonexistent “perfect” system will not give you longterm happiness and satisfaction if you don’t put the work in.

Nevertheless, we still strive to make our system, of government and society, better, because it can be the difference between people finding their way to the best version of themselves, and falling deeper into the hole they are in.

Maybe the call should be twofold; learn to see he struggles of others, and offer them support, but also learn to see the struggles in yourself, and take charge in driving the change you need.