Accept help from others

Why do some people find it difficult to accept help? I had just demolished a steep hill during my daily walk and was huffing and puffing from every orifice of my body, when I chanced upon an elderly lady about to cross the road. She had a walking stick and three shopping bags filled to the brim. She had taken them out of a car and the boot was still open exposing more bags. Being me, I immediately crossed over and asked if I could lend a hand.

 “I’m all right love,” she said, adding that her house was just on the other side of the road.

 “No, you’re not, you silly dear and don’t make me change my mind,” I found myself thinking.

 I ignored her comment, reached out, and tried to take the bags from her but she was still insisting that she did not need any help. I grabbed the bags anyway but must have applied some force because her fingers got entangled to the handles.  “Easy, tiger!” I cautioned myself as I gently freed her hands and walked with her across the road to her front door.

 “You’re such a lovely lady and I did not really want to bother you,” she said and then asked if I could help her with the rest of her bags. “My arthritis is playing up this morning but I needed to shop as I had practically run out of everything.”

 Bother me? Did you ask for my help? I would not have offered if I did not wish to help. She forgot that “Sometimes our light goes out but is blown into flame by another human being.”

 “Do you live around here? I have seen you a couple of times walking by,” she said, as I put down the last bag by her doorstep. “It will be ever so lovely to have you over for coffee. I don’t get to talk to many people, you see.”

 “Thank you but I don’t live around here. It is just on my walking route. Have a good day,” I concluded as I stepped out to continue my interrupted walk.

 Like my dear old lady, many of us find it hard to accept help from others. I attribute it to pride. We don’t want to be viewed as weak and frail. We want to prove that we are in control, even if we are dying. That is silly! We all need help. It does not make us less human to seek it or accept it.

 A friend told how he offered his seat on a bus to a lady with a young child only to get abuses for his effort. “Well, you can bet that I will not do it again.”

“What a pity,” I said and then reminded him that "Success has nothing to do with what you gain in life or accomplish for yourself. It’s what you do for others.” Even if they make you angry in the process.

 I don’t know about you but I experience pure joy out of helping people. And it seems that I am not the only one." In a national survey involving over 3000 volunteers from all fields, nearly 95% of them reported that helping people on a regular basis gives them an immediate pleasurable sensation. ‘Helper's high’ consists of physical and emotional sensations, including sudden warmth, a surge of energy, excitement and joy, immediately after helping.

Another reward we get from helping is a healthy distraction. Shifting the focus from ourselves to others takes us away from the hassles of life, at least temporarily. It blocks pain because our attention is shifted from personal pain to the plight of fellow human beings. I could tell that my strides changed as soon as I was on my way after my encounter with my elderly friend. I was ready for the next hill. When I got to it, my breathing was not forced. Cranking up the volume on my Ipod, I hummed along to the music and became oblivious to the time and distance from that point to my home.

 

 

 

 

Teach the children well

In the mid 70s, my husband, a newly qualified medical doctor arrived in this country for his post graduate program. One day he was asked by a member of hospital staff if it was true that Africans live in trees. He looked the lady from head to toe and then up again, smiled and walked away.

 Some months later, when he was back home on holiday, he bought a post card (the ubiquitous kind that shows swaying palm trees kissing the white sands, beside a calm, blue sea)  Turning to the little space often left for messages, he wrote: “Back home and having a lovely time. If you look carefully, you will see me perched on one of the coconut trees.”  He sent it off to the lady - upon return, she never spoke to him again!

 Fast forward 33 years later to yesterday. I was invited by a school to help with their African study month. I had two sessions with two classes, each consisting of 30 seven-year olds. We had a ball. We talked about the different people that make up my country, in comparison with theirs. We danced, talked about and shared some of the food produced in the vast arable land of my fathers. We discussed the different languages that make the country unique and tried some of them out. We looked at the part played by folklore in the lives of children and shared a story. We had a good laugh. But I also noticed something.

 The children were surprised when I told them that houses range from big mansions to make-shift huts belonging to the nomads; that some children play with X-boxes just as they do here, as well as home made toys for those who cannot afford proper toys. They wowed when I mentioned that some kids go to school in their parent’s cars or buses, while many others walk to school. Their jaws dropped when they realized that there are some big schools in my country, as well as those made of baked mud and rusty zinc roofs. Their reaction set my teeth on edge so I decided to ask them what they have been learning about my country. Many hands shot up.

 “We have learned that people do not have food to eat,” piped up an innocent voice. I felt a lump in my throat but pushed it down with a smile. “Right!”, I said turning to another little hand and excited face. “There are lots of diseases in your country.” My smile grew wider as the lump was joined by another choking one. “Great! Awesomely great!! What else do you know about my country,” I squeaked, praying for a miracle. “What is hepatitis? My dad went to climb Kilimanjaro and became sick.” “No, Kilimanjaro is in Tanzania,” said the teacher, shutting the child up.

 Well well!! So, of all the things children could have learned about this country, all they know of it are diseases and hunger. What a picture for their little minds! Yet the country in question:

• Was using iron and other metals by about 500BC (Iron age Nok culture)
• Had an ancient form of writing (Nsibidi) that existed over 1000 years ago.
• Is the sixth largest oil producer in the world and among the top five coco bean producers (they would have loved to know how chocolates get to them!)
• Has more writers and authors than the rest of West Africa combined and has produced the only black African to have won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
• Is noted globally for its arts and craft, its population (every third African is from this country) and over 100 different languages.

 There is no denying that some people go hungry in my country, just as in many other countries, or the fact that people suffer from various diseases. What country doesn’t? But spending weeks teaching children only negative things about a country is a great disservice to us all; it is unpardonable and morally wrong.

 It is like teachers in my country sitting their children down for a lesson in this foreign land. They then spend hours telling them that every adult, including their parents must undergo criminal checks before they are allowed to enter their school and interact with children, because there are many perverts preying on kids. It is like teaching them that people sleep on park benches with cardboards for blankets because they are homeless. Or they could tell them that the government pays people to be unemployed and lazy. Yea, sounds nasty, doesn’t it?

 Let’s learn to teach our children right and stop filling their minds with negatives and running other countries down!

Availing ourselves of opportunites

One of my big regrets in life – and I don’t have many of those – is that I cannot speak Arabic. Yet I lived in Saudi Arabia for years! The excuse I have always used when asked is that because we lived in an expatriate community, I did not have proper chance to learn it. Baloney!  Yes, we did live an exclusive life, but hey, I worked and interacted socially with Saudis and others Arabs. I held good cards but did not play them well.  I was brain lazy and simply content to learn enough to get by; especially when out shopping. Shukran!

 Opportunities often come to us disguised as hard work so most of us don’t recognize them even if they are staring us in the face. If only I had listened to Churchill who warned that the pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity while the optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty. Accepting that I am a pessimist is rather hard to swallow. I always prided myself as an optimist.

 Count yourself lucky if you still have the chance to recapture lost opportunities. I know a lady who at 42 is trying to pick up the shattered pieces of her education. She dropped out aged 15 because according to her, she was surrounded by discouragers. “My mother never believed that I could amount to anything and because she did not go through school, felt that neither I nor my siblings should do so.” We all ended up doing menial and boring jobs.” But the sun is rising again for her. She is now attending night school and tackling her O-level papers one at a time. I have noticed that her hitherto stooped shoulders are getting straighter and there seems to be more bounce in her steps.

 I will not live in Saudi Arabia again. I might never speak fluent Arabic. But I am determined never to allow good things to pass me by again. I will give every chance that life throws my way the best shot. I will forever remind myself of the Arabic proverb which says that “four things come not back: the spoken word, the sped arrow, the past life and the neglected opportunity.”

 So watch out Mr. Opportunity.  If you are flying by, I will jump high and grab you. If you are at ground level, I will stoop and pick you up. I will even develop eyes at the back of my head so that I can spy you. Any way you come, I will be ready.

 And so should you.