When we ask for anything, we're almost always asking for help, in some form; help with money, permission, acceptance, advancement, help with our hearts...Brene Brown has found through her research that women tend to feel shame around the idea of being 'never enough'... at home, at work, in bed, never pretty enough, never smart enough, never thin enough, never good enough...Men tend to feel shame around the fear of being perceived as weak, or more academically, 'fear of being called a pussy'. Both sexes get trapped in the same box for different reasons. If I ask for help...I am not enough.If I ask for help... I'm weak.It's no wonder so many of us don't bother to ask, it's too painful.
And another local journalist wrote an op-ed wondering if this trend of empathy had gone too far. Wondering if this trend of empathy had gone too far?To erase the possibility of empathy is also to erase the possibility of understanding.
To erase the possibility of empathy is to erase the possibility of understanding.To erase the possibility of empathy is also to erase the possibility of art. Theater, fiction, horror stories, love stories. This is what art does. Good or bad, it imagines the insides, the heart of the other, whether that heart is full of light or trapped in darkness.
The field of asking is fundamentally improvisational. It thrives not in the creation of rules and etiquette but in the smashing of that etiquette.Which is to say: there are no rules.Or, rather, there are plenty of rules, but they ask, on bended knees, to be broken.
Everybody keeps talking about 'fighting' the cancer," he said, "everybody keeps telling me to fight for my life, to fight the disease, and how their uncle won the battle against cancer and their cousin won the fight against cancer and black blah blah blah.""Okay...and?""I'm not fighting," he said. "It's already inside me... and I'm not going to fight. I'm going to be a good host, let it pass through me.. resist nothing. Sieve. Let it all pass through.