WHAT HELP LOOKS LIKE
We are all shattered and broken, every last one of us.
We are all shattered and broken, every last one of us.
We are all shattered and broken, every last one of us.
The repetition is for an emphasis of this sad truth. One other important truth is that we all need help. I could repeat that too, but this is every man’s truth. This truth is also well stated in the series of articles in the build up to this, the baseline is that we all need help.
Often times, people reach out to ask how to get the help we need? Those times, I answer the best I can but personally, I ask, what does help look like?
ME
I descended into myself for many years, slowly until I faded. I was a young promising budding poet with a couple of awards and prizes to my name and I was locally becoming a name to reckon with until I became anti-social after letting my woes press me down. My personality became a remembrance of Facebook memories and my voice became a distant echo and at the direst of times, I realized I needed help. What was even more interesting was that I knew what helped looked like, having summoned the abstractness of my needs into a reality that was only a reach away.
HELP is; a mass of dials and gauges, walking on and reaching with twos, coordinated by the Nervous System and an embodiment of the representation and likeness of God; man. I better rephrase; we all need someone.
In my darkest moment, lost in the abyssal belly of depression, I needed saving. I was drowning and my help pulled me out, hosed down the mud that stood as my embarrassment, piped me up with soothing words of encouragement and prayers, buttered me up with love and attention and steered me out of the mucky waters. A soothing voice and the towering image of a man, I managed to figure out.
Many of such figures have been around all of my life, throwing lifelines and safety nets my way, but until now, I didn’t realize help was the embodiment of a man and definition of the ambiguity in the subject “someone” and how it was that everyone needed someone. If I was to playback the scenarios where such desperate times conjured a helper, I’d say help is; a faceless man lurking in the stillness of time to relieve us in our dark times.
Like myself, many a times, many of us cannot recognize help even if it was staring us right in the face. Other times, we do not appreciate it enough to pay cognizance. It is as much the timeliness of the little things as much as the magnitude of the big things. I think there shouldn’t even be a measure for the greatness of any help, every effort is a building block stacked, one-on-the-other, that one, if taken away would either disfigure or displace the wall altogether.
KNOWING HELP
A smile to lighten up our gloom, a word of encouragement, a pat on the shoulder, a smothering hug that takes away pain, a quick fixup, a referral, a recommendation, a word of good faith, a ladder to climb, a towel to wipe our tears, the needed push, the hard truth and sometimes the disappointments that reminds us of what is real, neighborliness, peace in relationships and associations, tolerance of differences and humanity over sentiments, enabling environments for productivity, positivity and everything that makes life and living on the harsh planes of life worth living. It is the big things as much as the little things, if we must weigh it at all.
We are all shattered and broken, every last one of us, we all need somebody, help is all around us and as we live may we be blessed with eyes that sees, minds that recognize and hearts that appreciate helps in all its forms this new year.
