The Art of Helping People Out of Trouble/Chapter 11
The greatest mentality in the sea has been repeatedly derived from the continents, first in the fishes, then in the reptiles, and lastly in the mammals, and they have adapted themselves to the sea because of the ease with which they can there prey upon the less alert and intelligent. Such adapted stocks in the course of geologic time grow larger and larger, as, for instance, the whales of today. Out of them, however, comes no higher mentality. They represent an adaptation in the wrong direction, that is, to an easier life, for the highest organisms with the greatest mentality have been developed only on the land where the struggle for existence is fiercest because of the constant necessity of adaptation to an environment subject to intense changes. Organic supremacy is attained only through constant vigilance. (Charles Schuchert, The Evolution of the Earth and Its Inhabitants, chap. ii, "The Earth's Changing Surface and Climate during Geologic Time.")
At the opposite pole of human nature from man's desire to think and act for himself is his tendency to thrust upon others the solution of his problems. In its insidious way this inclination to escape responsibility is as strong as his will to achieve his own salvation. It appears at every stage of life, from childhood to age, and, while it varies in intensity in different people, it is absent from no one.
Weakness and inability are its special opportunity. The strong man obviously is able to take care of himself, and is expected to do so. There is no excuse for him to transfer his responsibilities, and therefore less temptation for him to do so, but where there is weakness the opposite prevails. Then the need of help is recognized and the person in trouble by reason of his own insufficiency can hope that his fellows will carry his burdens. Many things are done for the sick which in health they would do for themselves. Children being unable to cope with all the vicissitudes of life unaided are spared responsibilities which in later years they must assume. The loss of a job may force a man to accept assistance in meeting his financial obligations, and there are many other circumstances in which people are relieved of tasks which ordinarily they would be expected to assume.
Unless help of this kind is extended with understanding and foresight, it may become like the morphine which, having been administered out of the necessity for deadening pain, proves to be the means of forming in the patient an addiction to opiates. Once a man has enjoyed the luxury of having had his responsibilities carried by some one else, he finds the temptation to continue the period of weakness exceedingly difficult to resist.
Every one has moments when he does not feel like exerting himself, and when he would willingly yield to this disinclination even though at the expense of other people. All that we need at such a time is a sufficient excuse. We tell ourselves that the hot weather is especially hard for us to bear; or it may be that we still feel the effects of the influenza; or perhaps we are not qualified by experience for the undertaking; or, as a last resort, we just do not feel equal to it. If we can prove this to ourselves we feel that we can preserve our self-respect; and if we can lead others to believe us we can induce them to do our work for us.
This tendency which all of us occasionally experience may become greatly accentuated in any one who frequently or over a long period of time has received help from others. He finds effort more and more difficult and dependence easier and easier, until at last his energies seem to suffer a kind of atrophy and he becomes a parasite upon his friends and a handicap to all with whom he is associated.
One way of treating a person thus affected and of preventing his deterioration is to place responsibility upon him and to expect accomplishment of him. The doing of this involves more an attitude of mind than a definite procedure, a point of view that will be found to be more strongly developed in some persons than in others. Is it not true that there is a vast variation in the amount of effort which different people draw from us? As between two men, equally friendly, equally interested in us, we will be more careful to present accomplishment to one than to the other, more punctilious in the keeping of appointments, more precise in the making of statements, more effective in every way. The reason for this is that we feel that the one expects more of us than does the other. The same fact holds good of our attitude toward those whom we are helping out of trouble. We can make our assistance stimulating or we can make it enervating in proportion as we look for strength or invite weakness. There is nothing more difficult in the art of helping than this, for one must maintain a nice balance between doing everything and doing nothing, varying the weight of responsibility according to the strength of the individual who is being helped. This calls for the most intimate knowledge of the person in difficulty, and even then, one is frequently at a loss to know how much or how little of achievement should be expected of him.
Perhaps the simplest illustration of this is provided by the experience of a father and his daughter, who, one winter's day, were climbing a hill down which they had coasted. The snow was covered with a crust. Through this the man occasionally broke and therefore found the ascent easier than did the girl, a child of about five years, who, as they came to the steep rise that defended the top, began to be in difficulty. Her feet slipped from under her. She fell. She slid back, and it seemed almost as if she would be unable to complete the climb. The father was greatly tempted to put forth his hand and pull the child out of trouble. Instead, he encouraged her to continue the struggle. Walking now beside her, now half a pace ahead, he tried to make a game of it, laughing whenever the child fell, but with her, not at her, and cheering her on to greater effort, until at length the hill was conquered. Thereafter, with the experience and assurance of her first success the little girl repeated the victory with increasing ease. The mastery of the ascent strengthened her for the next attempt. Had not this achievement been expected of her she would have been by just that much retarded in the development of self-confidence. At the same time, however, that her father was placing the responsibility of making the climb upon her he was helping her to accomplish it. He gave her the assistance of his encouragement and he aided her by pulling the sled up the hill. Had she been older and stronger, they would have pulled the sled together, or perhaps have taken turns, but the father recognized what was possible and what was not possible, and asked of her only that which she could perform.
This recognition of the possible and the impossible is admittedly the crux of the problem of placing responsibility, a problem that cannot be solved by rule, but can be dealt with only on the basis of one's understanding of the person whom he is helping. Generally speaking, parents in comfortable circumstances are likely to underestimate rather than to overestimate the capacity of their children. Necessity compels the poor to expect self-reliance of their sons and daughters, but their wealthier neighbors have not this advantage. It is not unusual for boys and girls of families in comfortable circumstances to enter the first year of school without being able to dress themselves, or even to lace their shoes, while the overanxiety of parents and the availability of motor-cars prevents many a child of eight or nine years of age from learning to go to school alone.
Occasionally one finds instances of exactly the reverse of this, parents who expect too much too quickly. This often causes the children to feel that their elders have no sympathy for them and no understanding of them. Responsibility and self-dependence should be cultivated gradually, as was done by the parents of a seven-year-old girl in accustoming her to take herself to and from school.
The child lived where electric cars and automobiles passed continually, and the possibility of such an accident as every city mother dreads was always present. On leaving the electric car to walk to the school she was obliged to cross the street with its double tracks, and then, at the end of a block, a thoroughfare where the motor traffic was exceptionally heavy. The parents began by accustoming their daughter to the passage of the street on which their home stood. At first the mother crossed with the child, emphasizing, by example, the importance of watching for electric cars and automobiles, and of waiting for lulls in traffic. After a time she went only so far as the curb, leaving the little girl to complete the remainder of the journey alone. The next step was to watch from the window until her daughter waved to her from the other side.
While the child was learning this lesson—and the home of a playmate across the way provided frequent occasion for it—one or the other of the parents took her to school. As soon as she had acquired the necessary skill and confidence, they began to reduce the distance which they accompanied her at the school end of her journey, first stopping to watch her cross the automobile thoroughfare; then going only to the farther side of the street with the double car tracks, and at last discharging her from their tutelage by remaining on the electric car while she stepped off by herself. Could any procedure be more simple? Yet, for lack of such elementary processes as these, children are sheltered beyond the years when they should be relying upon themselves.
Nor is it only children who are unwisely protected in this way. The same mistake is frequently made by those who undertake to help people of foreign birth to adjust themselves to American life. Thus, a young woman who had entered training for social work devoted several hours each week for a number of months to taking a woman of immigrant stock to a dispensary. The trip involved a change of cars which apparently the woman did not feel able to manage. Later, an experienced social case worker became acquainted with the woman. She explained that she would accompany her to the dispensary once more so that she could observe the way, but that she was too busy to undertake more than this one trip. The next expedition the woman made alone, and thereafter she continued to attend the dispensary without a companion.
Often it is the subtle appeal to the pride of having some one consult us that prevents us from expecting accomplishment of the individual who seeks our help. There is nothing quite so flattering as to be asked to give advice. When a man comes to us in trouble we find it hard to resist telling him what, if we were in his place, we should do, and if he is at all inclined to be dependent upon others we are likely to assume the responsibility for most of his decisions, gradually depriving him of his self-reliance.
This was the way in which the spirit of dependence had been developed in Henry Norton. His parents had died before he had reached ten years of age, and an aunt had become his guardian. She was a woman of strong personality, and this, together with her pity for her orphaned, and to her mind, therefore, helpless nephew, caused her to take the initiative in all decisions. The boy learned to turn to her for the solution of his every problem. He became more and more dependent upon her, a dependence of which apparently he was quite unconscious until her death in a railroad accident.
Without her he seemed to be unable to direct his life, and in his dilemma he turned eagerly to the social case worker who had met him in the course of her work among the survivors of the disaster. Where should he live? What would she suggest? The social worker recognizing his difficulty felt that to throw him immediately upon his own resources would be to send him to a dependence upon the first sympathetic person whom he might meet. On the other hand, to tell him what to do would be but to continue him in a habit which was already too strong. She decided upon a compromise.
"Well, what is there that you can do?" she asked. "Have you any place at all where you could live?"
"My things are at the apartment, but I couldn't live there alone, could I?"
"Would you want to?"
"It would be lonely. What do you think I ought to do?"
"How do the students at the university find rooms?" This question was designed to open the way for a new plan.
"There is a registry of houses at the Dean's office, and sometimes they answer advertisements in the newspapers."
The social worker purposely offered no suggestion, and the young man added, "I suppose I could go to see the Dean."
Having visited a number of possible living places, he returned. He wanted the social worker to make a choice for him. She questioned him about the advantages and disadvantages of each house, but when he asked her where she would go, if she were in his place, she put the responsibility upon him. "You're the only person who can decide where you want to live," she told him.
Finally, he made the choice, uncertainly, and tentatively, but nevertheless his own. It was a wise selection, and the social worker added to his assurance by telling him so.
Almost immediately thereafter Norton was obliged to make up his mind about whether he should return to the university for a year of postgraduate study, or whether he should enter the field of advertising where an opportunity had been opened to him. Again, he turned to the social worker, and again she helped him by the indirect method of questioning instead of by telling him what to do. She paralleled advantages and disadvantages for him, but having done this she once more placed the decision upon his shoulders.
The man with whom Norton was now making his home perceived the young man's problem and supplemented the work of developing his spirit of self-reliance. The following comment was typical of the way in which this friend threw Norton back upon his own resources.
"The engine is stalled and I think I'll ask her to crank it," Norton had said by way of explaining that he was discouraged and was going to the social worker for inspiration.
"Wouldn't she prefer having you use a self-starter?" was the man's reply.
Norton had not thought of this. He decided to be his own inspiration. The process was repeated again and again, for once a person has contracted the habit of depending upon others for advice, he is not likely to break himself of it in a week, nor yet in a month.
This is not to imply that to give advice, and, when possible, to provide inspiration is not a legitimate and important form of helpfulness. To establish a principle of never doing this would be as unwise as always to supply it whenever it was asked. There is, however, a place beyond which one cannot go. This is where one finds the burden of decisions resting upon himself instead of—where it belongs—upon the person who is striving to make a better adjustment to life.
Sickness and physical handicap are perhaps the most difficult circumstances in which to tell whether or not—and to what extent—one should carry the responsibility of the individual in trouble. It is not so much in the acute illnesses that this question arises, for the man who is in the midst of one of these attacks obviously is capable of no exertion other than that involved in the will to recover. It is rather during convalescence, in chronic handicaps, or in minor indispositions that the issue develops.
In such situations the patient frequently believes that he is unable to undertake any of the usual activities of life and is in constant fear of what may happen to him if he attempts them. This caution is well founded. Any one whose vitality has been drained by disease or who has suffered the results of too early a return to work knows how justifiable and significant is the inclination to continue the period of incapacity. During illness the patient's willingness to abandon his ordinary tasks is often the measure of his chances of recovery; but not always. Sometimes the feeling of incapacity and the fear of effort may prevent a man from realizing that he is no longer ill or from appreciating that even in the presence of certain kinds of handicap a useful and interesting life can be lived. How many persons with weak hearts have betaken themselves to an unhappy invalidism despite the experience of those who in the same condition have been able to fulfill the ordinary demands of business. The belief that an individual who has had tuberculosis is stopped from any but that elusive occupation known as light outdoor work has become so firmly embedded in the minds of people that a physician will often have the greatest difficulty in convincing his patient that he can work eight hours a day in a great variety of employments. The tendency here and in like situations is toward a construing of the physician's diagnosis of disease in terms of an abandonment of effort, when what he intends is a more reasoned and a more intelligent activity.
This tendency is encouraged by the attitude of the friends of the convalescent or handicapped person. Out of a mistaken chivalry and in their desire to help they frequently confirm him in the feeling that he is not equal to the ordinary exigencies of life. This was what made a beggar of Harold Griffin. At the end of his last year in grammar school he met with an accident which necessitated the amputation of one of his legs. On regaining his strength he decided to go to work; but instead of aiding him to realize his plan, those from whom he sought employment expressed their sympathy by offering him money, until at length the boy decided that people did not expect him to support himself, and for four years he relied upon this kind of misdirected generosity.
Illness can become a habit. The longer a person is led to think of himself as an invalid the greater is the temptation to continue in this state of mind. He becomes confirmed in the feeling that he is too sick to do things for himself and he becomes willing that others should carry his burdens.
Complicating the problem of dealing with people who have acquired this habit is the fact that often one cannot tell whether the illness is real or imagined. Sometimes this unwillingness once more to assume the responsibilities of life is entirely unconscious. The person who has been sick and then convalescent over a number of months has during this time been removed from the struggle for existence. He has been able to think and to plan without translating his thoughts and his plans into action. Except for the recovery of his health he is likely to have no fixed purpose and his attention and his interests scatter. He dreams over the things he would like to do, but does not point them in any one direction. He talks about working but he does not realize that he has lost the habit of effort and that there has been insidiously developing within him a disinclination to action.
Even under such circumstances it is possible to throw responsibility upon an individual. This may be seen in the manner in which a social case worker dealt with a man who, after having had influenza, complained of not being well enough to return to his job. So many people are not strong enough to work for months after their apparent recovery from this disease that the social worker was puzzled about what to do. Finally, after consultation with a physician and with the man's former employer, she devised a scheme of graduated employment, beginning with three hours a day. The man could not deny his ability to work for so brief a period. After he had become accustomed to this schedule, it was lengthened, until at last he was busy eight hours out of twenty-four.
What added to the difficulty of this man's problem was the presence of financial as well as physical disability. During the period that his illness had prevented him from working he had been dependent for his living upon money which had been supplied to him by the social worker. It was therefore all the harder for him to overcome the temptation to find in his weakness an excuse for avoiding effort. For financial assistance, while frequently required by the person in trouble, is so obvious and so tangible a way of having his burdens carried by others that unless administered with the utmost wisdom it may cause a man to abandon his initiative and the exercise of his energies.
Most people still need the incentive to accomplishment that springs from economic necessity and material wants. How few of us if suddenly supplied with money enough to provide for these things would continue to work with the same concentration. Unless already in the grip of some dynamic interest we would probably follow the example of Jacob Wesley.
Wesley had completed a course in mechanical engineering and was about to start upon his career when he received a legacy involving an annual income of two thousand dollars. This took from work its imperative immediacy and he found one good reason after another for postponing action. First, it was a trip to Europe to complete his education, then it was a visit to some relatives, and after this it was the difficulty of finding just the right sort of an opening. When at last he took a job he could not forget that he was not obliged to work. This prevented him from developing an interest in his occupation and he soon left it. After a period of idleness he obtained another job which after a brief trial he abandoned. He drifted about here and there without cultivating his abilities.
Then an industrial depression took his income from him. His necessity might now quite possibly have been the making of him had not an aunt interfered. She felt so sorry for him that she gave him money upon which to live while seeking work. It was only a few hundred dollars, but it made a virtue of procrastination. When the money had been spent, Wesley did not find it difficult to suggest that he required a little more time to settle his affairs. Soon his aunt had grown as accustomed to giving as he to asking, and the opportunity to make a man of himself had passed.
Essentially there is no difference between the loss in initiative and the sense of responsibility which Wesley suffered and the dependence and beggary brought about in the boy who, on seeking a job after the amputation of his leg, received gifts of money instead of employment. The boy was seduced by dimes and quarters and Wesley by checks and banknotes, but the result was the same.
Dependence induced in this way is more complete and more demoralizing than that occasioned by any other form of reliance upon others. This is because money is vastly more than a medium of exchange. It is the symbol and the trophy of man's struggle for existence. It is the measure of his ability to provide for himself and his family. The instinct of self-preservation has made it the first, the most primitive, and the most widely recognized criterion of success—witness the satisfaction with which a wage-earner will remark as he looks back over the years, "I've always been able to support my family," or the manner in which a worker, now come upon hard times, will exclaim by way of describing past achievements, "Those were the days when I had money in my pocket."
Correspondingly great is the humiliation of the man who is obliged to confess his failure to meet this age-old test of manhood by taking as a gift the livelihood that other men are earning for themselves. It matters not whether the amount of money involved be great or small. His self-respect has been invaded. He has been obliged to yield his independence, and in its place there often comes a feeling of futility and of inferiority. He ceases trying to do things for himself and weakly allows others to carry his burdens.
When financial difficulties appear as part of a man's trouble, every possible measure should be taken to make it unnecessary for him to accept money as a gift. Perhaps he can be aided to find more remunerative employment. Perhaps a wiser household management will fit his present resources to his needs. Perhaps he can call still further upon his credit. Every conceivable resource which a man may have should be developed in the hope that by capitalizing past or future productivity he may succeed in meeting the crisis in his finances.
If his assets are not sufficient to his necessity and financial assistance is inevitable, then money should be given to him in such a way as to stimulate his sense of responsibility. This can be done through a careful selection of the source from which help comes to him. It should, if possible, suggest the idea of reciprocity. Thus, assistance from a member of the same family or from a friend, for whom in a similar situation he might conceivably perform a similar service, is better than aid from a stranger or from some one whose financial status is such as to render remote the possibility of his needing help. Aid from an employer contains the element of reciprocity, for there is, on the one hand, a growing public opinion that the employee contributes to industry more than the amount of his wages, and, on the other, the hope of the employee that in the future he may be able to make return in more effective work. Money received from the union or the church or the lodge to which an individual belongs has the virtue of appearing as a prerogative of his membership. On previous occasions his dues or his contributions may have gone to aid others. Now it is his turn. Perhaps later on he will once more be able to help some fellow member.
What the conception of reciprocity may do to foster the individual's sense of responsibility can be supplemented by expecting accomplishment of him in return for the money he receives. Financial assistance should always be supplied as part of a definite plan toward the execution of which the person in trouble must work. If he is sick, the goal may be his restoration to health. If he is out of work, it may be employment. If the individual in need of assistance is a mother, then the plan may center about the education of her children. The more definite the undertaking and the greater the emphasis upon what the person who is receiving help must do, the better are the chances of safeguarding his initiative and his self-respect.
Whenever the gift of money is necessary, this is the spirit in which it should be given, the same spirit in which every approach to people in trouble should be made, whether the assistance be financial or inspirational. Only thus can one prevent what one does for a man from becoming a temptation to him to allow his burden to be carried by others. To insist that he do his own thinking and that he act for himself is indispensable to his rehabilitation. It is the best way of showing respect for his ability and confidence in him, and this in turn has the effect of quickening his own confidence in himself. What we expect of an individual determines in large measure what he does. Give him responsibility, and he will develop in self-reliance and self-dependence.