I need to be useful. But what do you do when your services are unwanted?
Her picture stands on my bookshelf next to the pictures of my husband, son, parents and brother. Asia was my Great Teacher. In the picture she is smiling radiantly – because we smile radiantly for pictures, whether it’s a good or bad day, right? However, by that time, Asia was already diagnosed with multiple sclerosis. She was in for months of crutches, then years in a wheelchair, and finally spending the last years of her life bedbound. I got to meet her several years after that picture had been taken. A friend of mine, a Dominican friar, gave me her contact when I told him that I wanted to help somebody. “You can visit her and read books to her”, he said, “her eyes are too weak for that”.
Already after our first meeting, when I stepped out of Asia’s flat on Daszyńskiego Street in Cracow on my own two feet, I made a discovery worth all the books that I could possibly read. I had two good feet which moved as I commanded, I had arms with which I could reach for a book, and I had eyes which could read. Before that, I didn’t realise that it was a gift which you can receive, but which could also be taken away from you.
To be useful at all costs
When we talk about helping, we draw a thick line between a giver and a taker – but, after all, the giver is also the taker, except what is taken is something less measurable than a plate of soup or a tenner. It might even be more significant, yet intangible. We are given lessons which we, satiated and healthy, would be normally deprived of. We are also given the feeling that we can be useful to somebody.
Sometimes we jump at this opportunity, so greedy of the feeling of being useful that, along the way, we sometimes forget about the person we help. “Give it to me. I will iron it for you. Have some more salad. Salad is good for you!” We open doors. We make coffee. We say, “Go home already, will you? I will do it for you” to our friend, completely oblivious to the fact that our zumba classes begin in one hour and we promised ourselves that we will not skip them. What is it with this unwanted help?
Please be hungry, son!
Eric Berne, creator of transactional analysis, used to say that when we interact with other people, we start from the position of a Parent, Adult or Child. We invite the other person to dance a specific routine, increasing the probability of the anticipated reaction on the other side. Berne’s Parent has two natures – critical or protective. We can help maturely, from the position of an Adult. But when we take on the role of a Protective Parent, the way we help changes – we expect the other side to take on the role of a Submissive Child who demonstrates its helplessness. Sometimes, however, people don’t want to take on that role. “Are you tired?”, you ask your friend. “No, not really”, she replies, and then – if we are vigilant enough – we can recognise that we are a bit disappointed. “How come? Here I am with a blanket, tea and my proficiency in Excel, and you dare to not be tired? I opened my shop for you, and you say you won’t buy?”
The role of the Protective Parent is nice. It offers a velvet version of hierarchical order. You are the possessor and the giver, you are the one that has the knowledge to bestow or resources to provide others with. As long as the other person wants to take it, everything is fine. Your friend snivels over how her boyfriend did it again and you tell her that it’s about time she leaves him. She tearfully says that you are right and promises to break up with him. You cook, they eat. You keep things in order, they ask you where the iron is, where the screwdriver is, where their socks are, because only you know the combination to the strongbox with answers to all these questions. But what if nobody asks about anything, nobody is hungry, nobody is too cold or too warm, and generally everybody is fine on their own?
I thought that I didn’t have an overgrown Protective Parent in me. However, I had to change my view a bit when my son, asked for his age, started replying “year and a half to adulthood”, and when the inevitable and necessary process of him moving out began. To my amazement, I found out that I almost run down the stairs whenever he comes back home after a day spent with his friends. What’s more, I rush to the kitchen and put some pots on the stove to reheat some take-out food, hoping that my “little boy” is hungry, and I desperately want him to be starving. Who the hell am I becoming?
They need me, therefore they love me
When we have something to give, something that nobody wants, we are at a crossroads. We can either keep trying to shove it down somebody’s throat and transform allegedly noble activities into some form of aggression (because what else is forcing something upon someone who doesn’t want it). Or we can go down the other road. We can pause and try to explore what we really want to do. The latter is always better and almost always harder.
Personally, I am torn between these two solutions, although I think that I manage to do the latter more often. And then I discover that the offers to provide unwanted help are motivated by two types of fear. The first one is that if I’m not needed, I’m not loved. When my son doesn’t want reheated ramen, my help with a school assignment, or my advice on a conflict he has with a friend, does he still love me? Will it be enough just to be there without giving anything? Deep in my heart I know that the answer to this question is affirmative, yet fear shows up like an unwanted guest who just keeps knocking even though we have turned off the lights and we’re pretending that we’re not home.
The second fear is of empty space – of time which was once filled with all the things done for others, with all the bringing in, bringing back, maybe with volunteer work, maybe with helping with homework, and with running away from the endless “mum, mum!”. Who am I besides a helper, an organiser, a manager described by employees as “a bit like a mum”? Who am I besides these roles at all? Who will I become when I will be “just” loved and not indispensable in daily life? How will I feel alone with myself? Will I have enough time to find out, before – out of this fear – I throw myself into helping others again?
Who is a giver and who is a taker
There’s one more thing. How do I find out if my helping does my life and the lives of those whom I want to help any good? After all, it’s not about stopping helping and spending the rest of your life at those zumba classes that you never had time to go to despite having paid for them.
The way I see it, it is worth finding out if two conditions are met. The first one is that the help that I offer is wanted, i.e. that somebody requested it or, if I offered it first, that it is truly accepted. The second one is about intentions. Do I help out of love or sincere kindness, or just out of fear of what might happen if I don’t turn out to be of use? Out of love and kindness, or out of fear of an empty space in which I will only meet as much and as little as myself?
When Asia died, I was in deep sorrow for days. But after some time, I slowly began to feel that in some mysterious way she and all our meetings, books, talks, tears, laughs, and unanswered questions, all this comes back to me and settles within me. In one of his beautiful poems, E.E. Cummings wrote, “I carry your heart with me (I carry it in/my heart)i am never without it (anywhere/I go you go, my dear; and whatever is done/by only me is your doing, my darling)”. A person who comes to help may discover that they were also given something that will stay with them forever. Help that comes from the heart returns to us and obliterates the division into the one that has and the one that lacks, the giver and the taker. When we move past that division, the space for a meeting also opens wide.
Author: Natalia de Barbaro
The article was published in "Wysokie Obcasy" from 15 August 2020.
