The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble/Chapter 3
The principle of guidance cannot be separated from the thing guided. It recalls a parable of Charles Kingsley's which he related to Huxley. A heathen khan in Tartary was visited by a pair of proselytizing moollahs. The first moollah said, 'O Khan, worship my God. He is so wise that he made all things!' Moollah Number Two said, 'O Khan, worship my God. He is so wise that he makes all things make themselves.' Number Two won the day. (John Burroughs, in "A Critical Glance into Darwin," Atlantic Monthly, August, 1920.)
The first and the hardest lesson to learn about people who are in trouble is that they can be helped only if they want to be helped. There is no such thing as making an adjustment for somebody else. Only the husband and wife can make the adjustment to marriage; only the mother and father can make the adjustment to parenthood; only the widow to widowhood. No one can live another person's life. No one can overcome a single disadvantageous habit for him. No one can make him strong by working for him. No one can make him think by thinking for him. Whatever of happiness an individual achieves depends fundamentally upon himself. However great the opportunities that may be offered to him, however wise the suggestions that may be made to him, unless he himself is desirous of profiting by them, they can accomplish nothing for him.
What causes this lesson to be especially difficult to learn is the instinct to help that dwells in all of us, an instinct so powerful that often we cannot resist its impulses. Frequently it forces us to spend our energies in trying to help where help is untimely, where the individual is not ready to change, and where, therefore, he benefits not at all, or, at least, very little by what we do.
The only satisfactory approach to helping a person out of trouble is that which is made in response to a request for help. This need not be a formal request. It may be conveyed by a look or in a chance remark. Like the patient who seeks a physician for the relief of the symptoms of his disease rather than for the cure of the malady itself, the individual in difficulty may ask assistance in something incidental to the real problem. The girl whose difficulties with her family have culminated in her running away from home may inquire about a job, but a question or two will show her trouble to lie deeper. A man may seek a loan when actually his difficulty is a maladjustment to work.
The desire for help may be variously indicated. but there must be at least some sign of dissatisfaction or some stirring of the urge to better things. Occasionally one will be placed in such a professional or friendly relationship that he can stimulate this desire, but usually, unless its presence is evidenced by an appeal for assistance, an attempt to give advice will start under unfavorable auspices and with little chance of success. Without such a request, how can we tell whether the person in trouble has any confidence in us and in our ability to be of service?
Often what we, looking at a life from without, may think is trouble may not be trouble at all, but only a different way of living from that which we prefer. Husband or wife out of a far more intimate knowledge than ours may be able to discount each for the other words or behavior that seem to us intolerable, while parents may have a far more healthy relation with their children when they are alone with them than when they are conscious of being observed. Or it may be that an individual may willingly endure handicaps in his personal life because other things are more important to him. That sometimes is the price of genius. It is frequently through the storm and the stress of unfulfilled emotion, through trouble and unhappiness, that the great achievements of art and science are attained. Until such an individual indicates that he wants advice, it is not for us to urge our services upon him.
There are, however, situations in which one is justified in intervention even against the will of the person in difficulty. These are when a man is demonstrably incapable of managing his own affairs, when he is so neglectful of his children as to endanger their morals and their physical well-being, or when he does this deliberately, and when he is a menace to the health and life of his associates. Society has recognized such conditions as prejudicial to its welfare and has established laws and a definite procedure for dealing with them when they arise. For the person who is of unsound mind, it is possible through the courts to have a guardian appointed, and, if necessary, to have the mentally defective individual committed to an institution. The court can take children from parents who are ill-treating or neglecting them, and in many States the department of health has authority to remove from his home the diseased person who is endangering the health of his family and of his neighbors. There is vast room for discussion about when a man is incapable of managing his own affairs and when he is a menace to the health and life and morals of others, but experience in bringing questions of this sort before the courts enables public health officials and social case workers to know what evidence will be required by judges and lawyers; and when a family appears to be suffering by reason of the actions of one or more of its members, it is wise to consult the appropriate municipal department or social agency before acting.
Except in situations of this sort, intervention that is not invited runs the risk of failure. This may mean having to watch a friend's distress grow greater and greater when we feel certain that we could be of assistance. Often, however, matters must become worse before they can become better. Sometimes a man must reach the depths before the realization of his misery becomes strong enough to imbue him with the will to achieve a solution of his problems.
There is always the hope that he may of his own strength be able to overcome his difficulties; and this is vastly more important than that we should have the satisfaction of aiding him. The sense of achievement and of power that springs from meeting and making his own adjustments is too precious a possession to be denied to any human being. That which makes for the development of the person in trouble, which increases his strength, which adds to his character, should be the goal of every one who truly cares for other people; and there is nothing which will do more to forward the winning of this goal than the solution of a man's problems by himself.
It is when he decides that this is not possible that the time for help comes. So long as he does not run counter to the lives of others, our service to him is greatest when we await his call for assistance; when we undertake the art of helping only after having been asked to help.