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| Give & Take help to share meaningful relationships |
I always get the feeling that i am not valued enough. I tend to always proactively help out people but i realized that only a few realize my worth and value the help I give them. Most of the times i am taken for granted and in the odd case i am not able to help , people are visibly upset with me. I always used to wonder why is that ? Why am i not valued when i tend to help people the most ? If this sounds like a familiar story read on ahead...
Then i started analyzing. The basic feeling i have inside of me is to help people. Sometimes that leads to helping people in need and in other cases helping people who could have helped themselves too. This necessary / unnecessary helping out has lead to many complicated situations like the persons becoming dependent on me , expectations from me being raised to levels i cannot achieve and lots of quarrels when i am not able to help a particular person because i was genuinely occupied with some other important thing.
I observed one more vice that i tend to PROACTIVELY help people. By proactive , i mean that i tend to reach out to people and ask them if they need help rather than waiting for their request. In extreme cases , i found that i have gone and helped people because i felt like helping, even in situations when they could have got the task done, themselves. So this proactive help causes people to take me for granted. Because of this automatically my worth decreases. Let me illustrate with an example :
A particular person say A is in a problem. If i help that person out then A's reaction would be : this person always helps , likes to help so its nothing new for him. So , its not a big deal when i help A.
Now take the case of B. Now B never helps A. But in this particular case B went up and helped A. Now A's reaction would be : What a nice person B is. He helped me. It becomes a big deal for A since B never reaches out to help and in this rare occurrence he did.
And Bingo ! That's where my problem crops up. Automatically value for B goes much higher in A's mind rather than me.
A perfect example of that is parents. Our parents are the single most entities in our entire world who will be there for us always , would help us always and due to that we sometimes tend to take their help for granted. We feel so damn special when one of our friends goes out of the way to help us , but in turn do we value the same thing in the same way if our parents do it for us ? Another funny analogy (thought not completely on the mark ) is Sachin Tendulkar. If Sachin scores a century we feel happy , proud and in general happy but we don't think of it as a special thing. But in contrast if a newcomer or a not so known guy from whom expectations are low scores a century , he becomes an overnight sensation. In contrast , if Sachin fails and India loses , then entire nation fumes at Sachin. This is because because expectations are with Sachin and not the new comer guy who also failed with Sachin.
Solution ? Remember the magic of Give , Take and Share
Giving Help :
While helping people evaluate people if they need help before helping out and learn not to set very high expectations which can in turn lead to problems.One more important thing is to learn to manage help i.e to learn what does the person actually need and helping out accordingly.
Taking Help :
Our outlook should be changed. We should try to value each of the good deeds done to us irrespective of who does it. Taking people for granted happens because of expectations. Its OK to have expectations from people and its OK to be mad if those certain people are not able to help but it necessary to value the same people when they do help.
Sharing a Bond
Never forget why we help each other. Its just because of the bond that we share , with the person , do we reach out to help .Let's learn to value this fact and we will all be alright .
Inputs from readers are welcome.
Signing off ,
Tejas D.