Help For Those Who Need It

My daughter just had a flat tire. It happened not far from home, in a high end gated community. Her car was disabled in an undeveloped area, ten feet off a main road. Lots and lots of people drove by her, a few feet away. Many of them looked at her. She told me that one guy even hung his head out his car window, staring. Her emergency flashers were on, and she was outside the Volvo SUV, a petite blond thirty-something, after her phone call to Triple A, and obviously in need of help. People rode by her on bikes. A man walked his dog by her, a few feet away, twice. And no one asked her if she was Ok, or needed anything.

It's not that people were afraid to stop. She's certainly not a threatening individual. Plus, it was mid day, and the neighborhood has lots of security. Three or four security cars actually drove by during her forty five minute wait for help. One officer waved. But again, even those whose duty is to help didn't. She never tried to flag anyone down. She was taking charge of the situation from the start and calling for a tow truck guy to come help her. But then she waited. And waited, flashers going all the time. She just couldn't help but notice that no one at all inquired about whether she was Ok or needed help.

When she got home, she told me the whole story, astonished that no one tried to be of assistance or had even asked whether there was anything they could do for her.  Bu then she said, "It's called diffusion of responsibility." There's, of course, a related tale in the Bible called the story of the Good Samaritan. There's also some stuff in the same text that we often refer to as The Golden Rule. But she didn't experience anyone applying either passage in a positive way on this particular day.

I'm glad she told me the story. I don't want to be one of those guys who sees a need and keeps going. Her experience has reminded me that if we see anything where another person may be in some sort of difficulty, it would be good to stop and at least ask about their wellbeing, or need, and offer to help anyway we can.

And, hey, it's not securing peace in the middle east, but a mindset attuned to be of help does make the world a better place, if only by a little bit. Let's all try to do our bit as we move about through our days.

Ideals and Obstacles

Kindness. Mercy. Encouragement. Generosity of spirit. These are all moral ideals that I've written on recently. But there's an interesting thing about ideals. We never embody them perfectly. They may be perfect. But we're not. We fall short.

The value of ideals in our lives is in how we use them. They should be inspirational and aspirational - they should remind us, encourage us in the right direction, and often correct us.

The proper response to an ideal is to remember it and seek to live it. But we all encounter obstacles to the perfect embodiment of any ideal. We have our own psychological quirks and wounds, and some are buried deep beneath our conscious awareness. We have drives, and ticks, and sensitivities, and felt needs that can make it difficult to satisfy the strict guidance of our highest values. Something you went through in your childhood, or much more recently, could make it difficult for you, in some situations, to act in accordance with the golden rule, or your own best aspirations, in your treatment of another person, in action, gesture, or tone. 

Does that make you a hypocrite, for not always living what you might espouse? No, it just shows that you're a normal, fallible human.

Some people get all tied up in self-recriminations and guilt because of this problem. And those things then can become further obstacles.

How then should we respond to our own failures?

The first and most fundamental applications of kindness, mercy, encouragement, and generosity of spirit are always to yourself. Be kind to yourself. Be corrective and yet merciful toward your own failings. Encourage yourself along the path laid out by your ideals. And be generous to yourself as you seek and struggle and stumble along the road of improvement. Accord your own spirit the high value that you want and need to accord to others. That will create the conditions within you by which you can, increasingly, be these things to others, in even the most difficult of circumstances.

Love yourself properly, and you can then love others properly.

That's the real ideal.