Two persons were travelling in the night. One had a lamp, another had no lamp, but while they were both walking together both paths were lit. The path of the one who had no lamp was also lit, and he was very happy. He never bothered about any lamp — what was the need?
But then they came to a crossroad, and the man who had a lamp had to go his way.
Suddenly there was darkness. Now the other man suffered very much.
He started crying and weeping, saying, ‘Why didn’t I learn how to make a lamp? Why didn’t I ask that man how to light a lamp? My own lamp — even if it were small — would have been better, but I never thought about it. I was thinking that everything was going so well, so what was the need? The path was lit — but now’ ….
So it happens many times: if you come to a man who has his inner light burning, sometimes suddenly a door opens and your path is lighted and you see all that you could not even believe a second before — it is there!
But this is not your lamp, so this will become a memory and will haunt you.
Again and again you will think about how to go back. There is no going back, there is no need to go back. You have to go forward. You have to attain to your own light; and that can be done.
Take Support And Not Help
Repentance is not solution. This is time we need to ask ourselves existence give everyone an equal opportunity, then why our circumstances are different then the successful person. There is only one difference successful person knows with the support of others how to create their own light and failure person is lazy to take support but always depends on the help.
This time let’s understand the difference between help and support.
Supporting vs. helping…is there a difference?
Often we might interchange the terms support and help as meaning the same thing. However, there is an important difference between supporting someone and helping them?
Supporting someone is being fully committed to a person every step of the way, whilst allowing them to do their part in terms of making any changes necessary. Supporting another empowers them, as it comes from connecting to another as an equal and understanding that they have the power within them to arise above whatever is challenging them.
If we imagine a line, when we support someone we essentially go all the way to the line, but not beyond it. This allows the other person to come to the line and join us, but this is their choice to do so or not. In some cases they do, and sometimes they do not. This approach offers the opportunity for both parties to work together by taking responsibility for their own respective parts.
Helping another is when we essentially go over the line and enter into the other person’s space in an attempt to bring them to the line. This approach occurs when we perceive another as a victim of their circumstances, and judge that they are incapable of coming to the line for themselves and hence feel that to ‘support’ them we need to do the work for them.
The problem with helping another in this way is that, even if we do succeed in getting the person to come to the line it is essentially our energy doing it not theirs. There are many cases of this happening in the world, whereby one person motivates another to make changes but that the changes are maintained only for as long as the person continues to motivate them.
Whereas when a person is supported to make changes for themselves, the changes are able to be sustained because the person themselves 100% chose to make the changes.
Learning from the story Travellers And A Lamp: Take Support And Not Help
Experience Learning
If you really wants to support someone then don’t feel sorry, be sympathetic.
Help is invaluable. Support is priceless.
At the moment everything “being helped”, but really do think there’s a difference here. Being supported suggests an amount of agency and independence, while being helped can be quite a dis-empowering thing. Like when we ask for the right kind of tools to do a manual task and someone brings the tools and does the job for us. This way we are being helped, and we are grateful, but part of us feels dis-empowered. The end result is the same, the item is fixed, but I have lost the opportunity to learn, I feel like I’m not expected to know how to do these things, and I am forced to humble myself in front of the person with superior knowledge and skill.
Being supported however is different. Like a personal trainer – the trainer cannot run the marathon for you, but he can give you the tips for how to get fit, run alongside you reading you your speed and split-times while shouting encouragement. The personal trainer watches you struggle but continues to encourage because they know how hard the marathon is going to be, and that in the end you’ll thank them!
Whilst it may be easy to recognise the difference between supporting someone and helping them, the problem is that we often find it difficult to be lovingly detached and not step over the line when it comes to our closest loved ones, particularly when they are in pain or hurting in some way.
The most obvious symptom related to helping another is feeling in any way drained, depleted or exhausted afterwards. Whereas supporting another is rejuvenating and, whilst it can be physically tiring, is never draining.
When people hear the word ‘detached’ it can bring up beliefs about being heartless, clinical or cold towards another. However being detached is simply not taking on another’s issue/s, understanding that it is their issue not yours to deal with. Whilst we can provide all the support a person requires, ultimately it is up to them to address whatever is troubling them…so to never take on their issue as your own and work through it. Otherwise the ‘helper’ essentially becomes a ‘human sponge’, taking on everyone else’s issues under the belief that somehow they are doing good.
What if there is self-interest in helping others, given it is so exhausting to do so? For example, what if helping another keeps our attention on someone else and hence provides an effective distraction from dealing with one’s own issues?
Therefore never feel guilty or heartless about supporting another, but remain in the understanding that in supporting them you are not imposing what you want or need them to be, but simply presenting the potential next step whilst allowing them the freedom to make the choice for themselves.
