In Praise of Asking for Help, an essay by Hanif Reza Jaberipour

In Praise of Asking for Help

Hanif Reza Jaberipour (Senior Advisor at the "Australian Childhood Foundation" and PhD student at the Faculty of Education, Monash University, Melbourne, Australia)

 

Receiving Help as a Sense of Weakness

Asking for help is difficult for me. It is not easy for me to ask someone for help with a task or regarding a situation I am in. Even if someone comes to me on their own and offers help, I usually accept it with difficulty. This disposition has caused (and causes) me to not complete some difficult tasks well or to suffer harm from certain complex life situations.

One day I went to the house's storage room to bring out a not-so-heavy table. There were at least two people at home from whom I could have asked for help to carry the table together. But I automatically undertook this task alone. While exiting the storage room door, one of the table legs got stuck between the wall and the door. I tried to pull the table out, but the large size of the table and the lack of hand room in that relatively narrow hallway caused me to lose my balance. To regain balance, I unconsciously put pressure on the table, and the table leg cracked and became loose. I was extremely annoyed.

The first thing that came to my mind was a reproachful sentence: "Would it have killed you to ask someone for help? Here! Take it!" Within a short time, the justificatory forces of my being were activated with maximum effort to escape the pangs of conscience. "What's the big deal? Who said a person must ask others for help anyway? Saeb didn't just say for no reason: When you stretch out a requesting hand before others / You've built a bridge to cross over your own honor." At first, I tried to deny the issue and sweep it under the rug. But I myself knew I was making a fuss. Asking for help to move a table has nothing to do with honor. Certainly, the dishonor of breaking the table is greater than asking for help to move it safely. It took some time to regain my calm, bow my head a little, and think about this matter with more humility. The greatest discovery on this path was a question: "What does asking others for help signify to you?"

I soon realized that asking others for help, more than anything and before anything else, is a sign of weakness for me. I think there must be a weakness in me if I ask someone for help. Even more than that, I do not limit this weakness to a specific area of my being, but in a fraction of a second, I attribute it to my entire identity and personality, and "I" become a weak person. Asking for help can also be a sign of my incompetence. It is as if I have understood asking others for help in this way: that I should only ask for help when I am weak or incapable in a task. Requesting help means that I am not sufficient for my own affairs. With this mental framework, I ask others for help today, and for the next ten days, my mind is preoccupied with my own weakness and inability. Just see how many obstacles I have to asking for help! When I think like this, why should I ask for help? Why should I throw myself into such a terrifying abyss every time I ask for help? Even if I do get help, what do I do afterward with all that feeling of weakness and the negative sense of being weak? Honestly, breaking the table leg is better than enduring this state!

Just see what goes on in my mind: "I can handle the moving by myself. I can move the TV table myself. I'll put the child to sleep myself. I'll somehow handle life alone!" In short, I basically lift all the watermelons by myself. "What's wrong with getting help from two people?" I have a thousand answers for this too. "I don't want to trouble others. Everyone has their own problems. If someone else was supposed to spend time on this, then I wouldn't have spent my own time. I'll do it faster myself." I have another issue with asking for help. "Every time you ask for help, you become indebted to someone. You rack up a debt to the helper. You have to compensate later." Admit that with this mindset, asking for help is hard.

As much as I can, I avoid being indebted to anyone, even though it sometimes comes at the cost of becoming indebted to my nerves, my body, my back, my joints, my vitality, and even my family members. Of course, I have gradually come to realize that not asking for help is often impossible. You either humbly seek help from the people around you, or you inevitably become indebted to your own body, soul, and lifespan. In other words, I understood that when a task is bigger than me, or beyond the sum of my physical abilities, mental stamina, knowledge, and talent, and I refuse to ask for help with it, the result is either a botched job, its prolongation, harm to myself, harm to those around me, or all of the above! I sometimes see others who ask for help with

Asking for help makes us humans feel less alone.

Asking others for help brings our community closer together.

Perhaps!

We Parents

There is a proverb in English that says, "It takes a village to raise a child."[1] Perhaps the Persian equivalent of this phrase is "Neighbors, lend a hand so I can raise my child." Of course, this sentence is my own construction based on a Persian proverb I have never liked, and I disapprove of the tone and implicit irony within it. Anyway. When you talk with Australians and Europeans about parenting methods, you often hear a lament in their words about the loneliness of mothers and fathers in raising children. They often say that it truly takes a village to raise a child. They say what a pity it is that new urban and social structures have taken this opportunity away from us and our children. They say how fortunate you are that in your country, young parents still have the support and guidance of their families. Sometimes I just take a deep breath, and sometimes I say that we are slowly heading down the same path. I think to myself, what's wrong with neighbors lending a hand so I can raise my child? Replace the word neighbors with mom and dad, with friends... Where did this notion come from that I must raise a child alone? What about the help of others? What about receiving help from others?

Over the past years, in conversations with Iranian and Australian mothers and fathers, and occasionally Indian, Chinese, and European ones, my attention has been drawn to several obstacles that stand in the way of receiving help from the "surrounding villagers" in the totality of tasks and preoccupations related to raising children:

- First, all the internal obstacles I recognize within myself regarding asking others for help, which I enumerated earlier.

- The individualistic and fragmented lifestyle of humanity these days reduces face-to-face connections and, of course, hinders helping one another and asking for help from one another.

- A sense of ownership over children, which over time (or perhaps from birth) has replaced a sense of responsibility and care. This feeling causes the parent to see themselves as the determiner of the child's life variables and to limit, as much as possible, others' access and influence over their property. This approach naturally prevents receiving help from others.

- Many parenting styles these days have become so detailed, precise, and scrutinizing that they seem to be giving cooking instructions to parents. The prescriptions of these parenting styles and schools have entered the specifics of life to such an extent that they unconsciously steer mothers and fathers toward nitpicking and implementing recommendations, instead of a vibrant and healthy connection. Parents are constantly comparing their own state and behavior, and that of their children, against pre-designed templates and yardsticks. Consequently, under such conditions, the only thing a grandmother, grandfather, neighbor, friend, or acquaintance does is mess things up!

- Communications, social networks, Telegram, Facebook, and Instagram in particular, and news in general, these days inform everyone about every incident happening anywhere in the country, and indeed in any corner of the world, gathering audiences and likes. If a danger threatens a child in one corner of the world, it now threatens all children. If a tragic event happens to a child, in the eyes of poor parents, this event lies in wait for all children. Under these conditions, everyone becomes more cautious and prefers to keep children closer to themselves.

- Self-care and sexual development education are necessary and have a thousand benefits. However, some styles of this education, rather than being based on raising awareness and equipping parent and child to go out into society, are built on fear and make the parent so fearful, trembling, and suspicious that they know no safe place for the child other than their own embrace.

These are some of the obstacles that prevent us from meeting our own needs and those of our children. In parenting, we need to seek help from others so that we can have some time and energy for ourselves, to put our personal space as human beings in order. We need help to catch our breath and be lively parents for our children. We need help so that our children can experience safe, responsible adults other than their own parents. This is part of their emotional and social development. Our children and those around us need us to keep the flow of kindness and affection moving in life by seeking help. Kindness and affection, when stagnant, breed murkiness, and when flowing, clarity.

Final Word: Removing Obstacles Before They Grow

A long time ago, I read an article by Gabor Maté[2], the Polish-American physician and psychologist. The article was about an unpleasant phenomenon occurring for newer generations. His observation was that, under the influence of social media and virtual communication, the peer group has become the primary source of inspiration, decision-making, and consultation for adolescents and young adults. He considered this detrimental to this generation. He emphasized that while children's connection with their peers is important, it is crucial that the generation of mothers and fathers still remains the safe point for children and their place of reference in critical days and circumstances.

But Gabor's key suggestion began with a warning born of observation and experience. "The time will eventually come when our teenagers, for all sorts of reasons, will not want to talk to us. It is necessary then that there be safe, familiar, and responsible adults in their lives to become the children's first option for consultation and conversation." He said we must have a group of wise and trusted adults around us and gradually build strong relationships between our children and adolescents and them. This connection and support circle has no remedy other than being formed in the family years before and becoming established for the children. Imagine if our feeling towards some relatives and friends around us were such that we could rest assured that if our child or teenager does not talk to me (which sometimes they don't), their first option for confiding or consulting would be one of these responsible adults. I think securing this safety margin has a direct relationship with the skill and desire of mothers and fathers to mutually seek help from others.

Throughout the years I have worked with families and educators in Iran and Australia, I have always asked my audiences the key question I asked myself: "Who is good at asking for help?" Usually, less than twenty percent of those present have given a positive answer to this question. At first, I thought that not being adept at asking for help was part of our cultural traits as Iranians. But later I saw that out of a group of twenty Australian parents or educators, at most four or five expressed that they are comfortable asking for help. So I generalized my theory from an Iranian cultural trait to a human characteristic. It seems to me that asking for help is not easy for most of us humans. The set of obstacles described throughout this writing can arise in the path of any human being who needs help. My experience is that removing these obstacles in adulthood requires a Herculean effort. For this reason, I was thinking about how we can help children from childhood to become well acquainted with asking for help and its obstacles. At a younger age, these obstacles, like the children themselves, are smaller and more flexible. I was thinking about how we can help children become familiar with their physical, emotional, mental, and cognitive characteristics and experience asking for help in a timely manner. My impression is that successful experiences of seeking help from peers and adults can gradually become an asset for children. Over time, their mental image of themselves becomes someone who, whenever needed, can find safe, responsible, and capable people around them and count on their help. Imagine what a safe world that world would be.

[1] It takes a village to raise a child.

[2] Gabor Mate