Yes, you should help someone in a crisis. Yes, you should support that person, to help them to be able to once again stand on their own. But you can only help them if they are willing to be helped, and when they are willing to help themselves. It cannot be one-sided support, because as we all know, if one of the support pillars is not actually supporting, the whole structure eventually tips over and crashes to the ground. You ARE one of the support structures in your own life. You are!
If you have a car and never get an oil change, it will break down. When it breaks down, you call for help. A friend or family member comes to help you, calls a tow truck, and the car is taken to a mechanic, who then fixes the car. Because the car was broken down, you couldn't go to work to earn money, so the friend/family member pays for the tow and for the car repair to help you get back on your feet. You are now back on the road, or should I say, the road of life.
Now you know that you must get a periodic oil change, or your car will break down again in the future. You must do your own due diligence, because it is your own car. If you do not get those oil changes someone might come help you again, make all the efforts to get your car repaired, but there is a limit to how many times people will do that for you.
That is how life is. People do not want to keep putting good money after bad and wasted effort forward for someone who doesn't put in any effort of their own. It is not their car, not their responsibility, it is yours. Your car, your life, your responsibility. Not theirs.
The same applies to everything in life, including your health - both physical and mental. You get sick, your friends/family members call the ambulance to take you to the hospital, and the mechanics (doctors, nurses, nursing homes) do their best to repair you. It then it is up to you to get the oil changes. It is up to you to make lifestyle changes, to stop smoking, to stop drinking, to eat a healthy diet, and to put forth the effort in activity and exercise. If you find that you cannot do it all on your own, you need to make the calls to find people and places that will help you to help yourself. There is no magic pill, and no magic wand, and no genie that will cast a spell to make your car work forever without an oil change.
It is your car, your life, and it requires your own diligence and your own effort. Other people are not going to be there forever to support you, to "gift" you with help, hope, money, care, and consideration when you are not putting in any effort on your own behalf.
If you believe at some point that your friends and family have abandoned you at the "worst time in my life", you are more than likely wrong. The current worst time isn't the only worst time. There probably have been many other "worst times" in your life. People were there for those times. Not everyone in the world, but some people were there. At different times, some different people, but after a point, some have given up and moved on.
In life we evolve, or de-evolve, in many different and distinct ways. Most people at many times in their lives become set in their ways, in their mental attitudes, behaviors, and in their own self-image. They do not evolve or de-evolve but instead become stagnant. Yet, as society changes, as other people change, that stagnancy becomes in fact, de-evolution.
A marriage becomes stagnant when you do not work on it. If you settle in, believe that it will always be the same, that it is perfect, without putting in any further personal effort or change, you will discover at the end that your spouse might have settled in too, but won't remain settled in. They will become unsettled, or you will, in the end. Life isn't a static thing, and neither are relationships. Family, friends, acquaintances, they all change over time. The people do.
We all have our own lives, and our own oil changes. Be it health, love, mental fitness, or physical fitness, we each have our own challenges, and need to make our own efforts for our own benefit. As time goes by, people begin to decide that some challenges, and some efforts, are pointless to keep wasting effort on. Most decide those are being thrust us by other people who are unwilling to change themselves.
"You have to accept me for who I am, and how I am, and that is the way it has to be, for me!"
Except, we really don't have to. We are not you. We are ourselves, alone. You do you, but don't expect us to do you too. We don't have to, and we don't want to.
And that my friends, is the way it really is.
If life is a car, don't be a flat tire.
My best regards to you all,
M.W. Van Dyke
***
Footnote:
I must note the following with my foot:
The quote, “Responsibility finds a way. Irresponsibility makes excuses.” (Gene Bedley 2021), which he probably thought up on his own, however I read this many years ago while reading a blog post by Dr. Marvin Marshall.
He had written, "Whenever my students gave me an excuse for something within their control, my standard comment was, "Responsibility finds a way; irresponsibility finds an excuse." The purpose of this mantra was to encourage responsible thinking and behavior.
I used the Gene Bedley quote image only because I could not find one for Marshall, and I was too tired after writing my blog entry to create the image. So, being lazy. How irresponsible! 😜
No comments:
Post a Comment