Culture

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