Help

Help, this small four lettered word, if converted into an action has the potential to make life convenient and sweeten up relationships. The word in verb form signifies to render assistance  to people to turn their troubled or complex situations into placid or easier ones either assisting them in doing something or doing the things for them. Such an action of giving and receiving help has the capacity to bind both the giver and the receiver of the help into an ever-lasting relationship of closeness.

            It is a universal truth that man is a gregarious animal. Hence, to lead lives, the bonding of humans in names of various relationships with each other is indispensable. It is often seen that the bonding beyond blood relationships has also the chances to evolve with the aid of various acts of help undertaken by people in regard to each other in different situations. In our daily lives, we cannot live in isolation from other people as we are social beings. Hence, we have to ask for or solicit some assistance from our kith and kin or from other people during our troubled times.  Those aids asked or sought for may be of various types considering the giving or receiving of it in different contexts.     

             Therefore, there are examples umpteen of helps rendered.  To cite a few of them are like aiding someone in packing bags prior to a long trip, rendering some help to someone during their cooking in the kitchen on hot summer afternoon, lending hands to olds and children in crossing the busy roads, being with someone to select the dresses of their choice in a big and  busy shopping centre, accompanying someone on a significant errand to a place never visited earlier, escorting  the sick to the doctor and so on. Sometimes some sorts of help we render to do something for the people solely by ourselves. Such as, picking up others’ children from school on request and keeping them with us for sometimes before their parents turn up to take away them, taking care of others’ children during their school holidays when their parents are busy in doing their office work, taking care of a friend’s flower pots or pets when they are out of town and holidaying somewhere far away, paying the hospital bill for someone facing financial exigency etc. etc.

            Hence, some instances of helps are given above, which we can say manage to lessen the pressure on us or to do it away completely on various taxing occasions. Therefore, while a feat of help is characterized with such a noble objective, we should be conscious not to categorize it into a small or a big one and diminish its invaluable worth.  Whatever may be the help, it, we can see, provides us relief during our distressed times. Therefore, we should be ready to acknowledge its invaluable merit at least expressing our gratefulness with the expressions of thankfulness to the person who provided it. We should also be mindful of the fact that when somebody becomes ready to help us, we should allow the person the scope to do it in their own way because they have to do it rescheduling the routine of their day. We should also avoid dictating them to follow the courses of our choice in their doing the tasks for us. Finding fault with the way someone helps us also mars the graciousness with which an act of assistance is to be received.        

            Therefore, if the acts of helps are to be taken as the mediums to sweeten up relationships, following the ways discussed above to respond to an act of aid given might help us in this regard.  The ways followed, may have the capability to reveal the courteousness of the recipient of the help towards the helper quite in proportion to the magnanimity that the latter shows in giving the aid.  Such reciprocity, it might not be erroneous to say that will be successful in germinating perpetual bonds of closeness among people.   

………….Dr. Fathema Begum