No one is coming to save you - but you don´t have to do it alone

Two things are certain in life: we are born, and we die.

In a sense, both are journeys we make alone, even when other people are present.

During our first years, we are more or less dependent on others. Our parents, siblings and relatives teach us the basics. Later, teachers, classmates and friends add their lessons.

But when the examination comes, we still have to sit it ourselves.

The same applies when we enter working life. At first, someone shows us what to do. We receive guidance, I make mistakes and gradually become more capable. Eventually, we may be the ones expected to guide others.

Even when we work under someone else’s direction, however, we remain responsible for the work we deliver.

There is an old Icelandic saying: Veldur hver á heldur — roughly speaking, each person is responsible for what has been placed in his hands.

I’m the One Who Can Do This — But I Cannot Do It Alone

Some people work best as part of a group. Others prefer to work alone, although even the most independent among us usually need assistance at some point.

The important distinction is between independence and isolation.

I have often chosen my own path. When an idea came to me and I became convinced that nobody else was going to make it happen, I usually concluded that it must therefore be mine to pursue.

At such times, I have sometimes said:

“I’m the one who can do this — but I cannot do it alone.”

That may sound contradictory, but it describes the situation rather well. One person may have the idea, take the initiative and carry the main responsibility. Nobody else can take his place in that sense.

But bringing the idea fully into the world usually requires the knowledge, labour or support of other people.

How that help is given matters.

A person can take the hammer out of your hand, complete the job and call that helping. The job may get done, but you have learned nothing.

A better teacher allows you to hold the hammer, make a few mistakes and gradually learn how to use it.

“You Close This, Young Man”

I remember an occasion during my early medical years when I was assisting two older and very experienced surgeons.

After they had inserted the joint prosthesis, they removed their gloves and walked out of the operating theatre. Considerable work still remained before the operation was finished, particularly the closing of the wound.

As they left, they said to me:

“This is yours, young man. You close.”

I had sutured wounds before, so I began with considerable confidence and did my best. I probably believed I was doing everything correctly.

I was not always doing everything correctly.

The senior operating-room nurse who frequently worked with me could easily have scolded or humiliated me in front of the other nurses. She never did.

Whenever she thought I was doing something the wrong way, she had a particular method of correcting me.

“Yes, you do it that way,” she would say. “That is interesting. The senior surgeons — the old, experienced hands — usually do it this way.”

Then she showed me.

Naturally, I followed her guidance. More importantly, she allowed a young doctor to retain his dignity in front of the rest of the operating-room staff.

That is a remarkably effective way of helping someone: correct the mistake without diminishing the person.

People need room to learn. They also need someone close enough to prevent the learning process from becoming a catastrophe.

The Little Yellow Hen

There is pride in completing a job well, particularly when you have carried the responsibility and can honestly claim the achievement as your own.

Problems arise when people want to claim the credit or enjoy the rewards without contributing to the work.

That is why one of my favourite childhood stories has always been The Little Yellow Hen. Icelanders of my generation knew her by that name, although English-speaking readers will recognise essentially the same story as The Little Red Hen.

The hen finds some grain and asks the other animals to help her plant it.

Nobody wants to help.

She asks for assistance with harvesting, grinding the grain and baking the bread.

Again, nobody is available.

When the bread is finally ready, however, everybody is suddenly eager to eat it.

It is difficult to find a better short lesson about work, responsibility and the human enthusiasm for sharing the reward after somebody else has done the labour.

Most of us will meet both kinds of people: those who help when the work needs doing and those who arrive when the bread comes out of the oven.

Help Rarely Arrives Before We Ask

Although we receive help from many people throughout life, the primary responsibility for our lives remains our own.

This becomes especially important when life begins to come apart — through alcohol or drug misuse, financial trouble, declining health or other difficulties.

Other people may see what is happening. They may worry, offer advice or try to intervene. Sometimes nobody acts until the situation has become severe.

Lasting change rarely begins until the person himself is ready to acknowledge the problem and take the first step towards appropriate help.

That does not mean he must solve everything alone. It means that nobody else can make the fundamental decision for him.

There is a considerable difference between saying:

“Somebody needs to fix my life.”

and saying:

“I need help to fix my life.”

The first hands over responsibility. The second accepts responsibility while opening the door to assistance.

We Change Places During Life

We all move through different roles.

At times, I have received help; at other times, I have given it. I have been guided, and I have guided others. I have failed and disappointed others, just as others have failed and disappointed me.

None of that means we cannot continue walking through life together.

Each of us may hear a different rhythm and move in a different way.

That thought takes me back to a postcard I found while travelling abroad for nearly two years as a young man. I sent it to my parents, perhaps as an attempt to explain what I was doing and why I seemed determined to follow a route of my own.

The card carried a passage from Henry David Thoreau:

“If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.”

I still believe that.

We do not all have to walk at the same speed or choose the same road. We should, however, take responsibility for the road we choose — and avoid trampling on everybody else while marching to our private drummer.

Twice a Child

As we grow older, the balance begins to change again.

Technology has advanced at extraordinary speed. Facebook is the social medium of my generation, but just as many of us finally began to understand what we were supposed to be doing there, our children had already moved on to entirely different ways of communicating.

Later, the need for help may become more physical and more personal. Strength, mobility, memory or health can deteriorate. Tasks that once required no thought may become difficult.

There is another Icelandic saying: “Twice does a man become a child.”

The comparison is imperfect. An older person carries a lifetime of knowledge, experience and dignity that a child has not yet acquired. But both may depend on others for things they cannot manage alone.

Receiving help is not necessarily surrender. Sometimes it is simply the intelligent recognition that circumstances have changed.

Responsibility Is Not Solitude

While we retain the capacity to act, we remain responsible for our own lives.

That does not mean refusing assistance until everything has collapsed. Nor does it mean pretending to understand technology, finances, health or relationships when we clearly do not.

Asking for help does not always require admitting complete helplessness or approaching somebody on one’s knees.

A man can ask another person whether he would like to take part in something he is doing. He can suggest that the other person take responsibility for a particular part because he is especially good at it — perhaps even better than the man who began the project.

At the same time, the person who started it may remain perfectly capable of handling the other parts himself.

That is neither weakness nor manipulation. It is a sensible division of labour. It allows both people to contribute what they do best while preserving the dignity of everyone involved.

There are situations in which we must say plainly, “I do not know,” “I cannot manage this,” or “I need help.” But there are also many situations in which the more accurate request is: “Would you take care of this part? You are better at it than I am.”

All of us need at least one person we can genuinely approach when things become difficult. Unfortunately, not everybody has such a person.

When that is the case, one of the best things we can do is become that person for somebody else.

Life has a curious tendency to return what we put into it. Not always immediately, and not always from the same direction, but often enough to explain the familiar phrase:

What goes around comes around.

No one is coming to live your life for you.

No one can take every difficult decision, face every fear or repair every mistake on your behalf.

But you do not have to do it all alone.

Three questions may be worth asking:

• What is mine to take responsibility for?

• What help do I genuinely need?

• Who might need my help?

The Little Yellow Hen was right not to let the others claim that they had baked the bread.

But life would have been considerably easier if one of them had simply offered to help her plant the grain.