Helplessness
That’s what I call it.
The culture of helplessness. This
culture is based on the idea that we expect others to take care of all of our
responsibilities for us, or at least we expect others to accommodate our needs
immediately. We have the idea that any level of discomfort
be it emotional, physical, or financial should be addressed immediately. We think that discomfort is an
emergency. (Please be reminded that that
an emergency is defined as a threat to life, limb or property. Moderate discomfort isn’t mentioned anywhere
in that definition.) Anyway, I often notice that because people tend to
mistake kindness for obligation, they expect more. They feel more entitled. They become helpless.
Expectations
Now, don’t misunderstand, I believe in the power of a
network. We all need networks to
survive. Emotional networks. Professional networks. Communal networks. We are social creatures; it’s much easier to
navigate life’s tsunami when you don’t have to go it alone. But you can’t abuse your network. You need to be able to contribute something to
the progress. You can’t expect other’s
to carry all of your weight. All of your
burdens. It’s unfair. But it’s also helpless.
When you expect other’s to take care of you, all the time,
you are essentially saying that you are more important than everyone else. When you expect your networks to fix what you
have broken, you are telling them that they should make you a priority. We do it a lot in this culture. We tell teachers to make our children smart
and well behaved, instead of teaching them ourselves. We tell our doctors to make us healthy, despite
our unhealthy lifestyle choices. We tell
our banks that it’s their fault our homes were foreclosed on when we didn’t do
enough to protect our own financial stability.
We tell our loved ones that it’s not our out own fault when we feel bad,
and it’s their responsibility to make us feel better. These are the expectations. We expect others to fix EVERYTHING for
us. But when we do that, we lose sight
of our values. Important values like
respect, self-reliance, gratitude and appreciation.
Appreciation
TRUTH: The people you
do the most to try to help will be the quickest to shit on you for not helping
enough. It’s just a fact. It’s inevitable. Maybe it’s because you have more interaction
with those people, so they feel comfortable.
Maybe it’s because you when you show kindness to people, they
misinterpret it for vulnerability or
weakness. Maybe it’s just because people
are assholes. I don’t know the
reasons. I haven’t read the
studies. But I do know that when take
the time to help people, they tend to mistake you for their personal
assistant. I found myself marginally guilty
of this behavior today. After I had
spent six hours trying to remedy a really bad situation, for a man I barely
know, I had nowhere else to turn, but to my network. I called my colleague, my friend, while he
was at lunch and I screamed into the phone “HELP ME NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!” Just like that. Like that guy should stop everything he was doing
to help me help someone else. I mean
really. This guy works 15 hours a
day. Maybe I could have waited another
15 minutes until he finished his lunch.
But I didn’t. HELP. ME. NOW.
That’s what I said. And he
did. I don’t know why. Because I was only perpetuating the culture
of helplessness. And I realized it
immediately. So, I texted him and
said. “Thank you. I appreciate you.” And his response made me think.
LOL
“LOL” That was his
response. Like gratitude is funny. Like it’s hard to believe that somebody appreciates
your time and your sacrifice. LOL. That’s when I realized the real problem with
the culture of helplessness. It’s not
just that we are teaching our children that they don’t need to take care of themselves,
it’s that we are teaching the people who do take care of them to do it without
recognition. And we are teaching that
entitlement is an important benefit, but the burden it places on others isn’t important. We are teaching ineptitude and ignorance and
irresponsibility. LOL. Right?
-Inner Peas
No comments:
Post a Comment