Aim It Inward

My wife and I like to walk the boardwalk near us. Not long ago, we were walking and a family stopped us and asked if we would take their picture. Of course. You frame the shot, you wait for the smiles, you hand the phone back, and everyone is a little warmer for it. Easy.

Twenty minutes later we wanted one of the three of us, and there it was. That small hitch. Who do we ask? They look busy. We do not want to bother anyone. The exact favor we had happily done for strangers minutes earlier, pointed the other way, suddenly felt awkward. Sometimes we ask, and whoever we ask is glad to, the same way we had been. More often we decide it is fine and just take the selfie.

That little gap is everything.

And if you are the person other people call when something breaks, you likely know that gap in a hundred different ways.

You will spend an afternoon opening doors for everyone else and hesitate or not even think to send the same email that might open one for you. Same favor. It just feels almost physically heavier when it is aimed the other way.

Here is what I have come to think is going on, and it runs deeper than manners.

Part of it is that we misjudge the other person. Think of the last time someone asked you for an introduction, or a read on a decision they were stuck on. You were likely glad to help. You probably still remember it a little warmly. You were valuable. That feeling is real, and it is the exact thing we can often refuse to believe anyone could feel when the request is pointed at us. We can treat our own ask as a cost we are imposing, when for the other person it is usually a small and genuine pleasure to be useful.

The rest of it is ego, and it is quieter. To ask is to be seen needing something, and if you have spent years being “the capable one,” that is an exposure you have a lot of practice avoiding. So you stay the person with the answer, even when you are the one who could also use one.

It does not even matter whether things are going badly or well.

Struggling, you might not ask, because that would mean admitting you could not handle things. Thriving, you might not ask either, because that would let someone see a crack in the armor, or you might feel you’re doing well enough to not need to ask for help.

The conditions can change, but the answer never moves. Naturally defaulting to “I’ll be okay, I’ll figure it out, I’ve got this. It’s fine. That, to me, is most telling because if this were really about not wanting to be a burden, it would loosen when the ask costs almost nothing (like asking ten seconds to take a photo of a family).

But when that feeling doesn’t loosen, it was never about the ask, it’s about an inner narrative and feeling.

Now, none of this means saying yes to everyone who asks, or handing all your problems to anyone who will take them. You have enough sensibility and judgment to filter out incoming asks, and know where others can support you. This is about the margin, the quiet default that keeps tipping you toward doing it alone.

What it costs you is hard to see, because you usually do get there on your own.

Recently I was stuck on a legal matter, grinding at it alone, making slow progress. I had not asked anyone for help. A friend simply offered. Said you should talk to this person, who pointed me to another, and a better path opened up than the one I had been forcing. I would have gotten somewhere eventually, but I landed in a better place faster through my friend’s helpful suggestion. Left alone, your mind runs the same loops it always runs. It’s all it can do. The whole value of another person is that they are not you. They sometimes see the path you might have been overlooking for a year.

But the cost I have only started to see lately is not about outcomes at all. Every time you refuse to receive, you keep the relationship pointed one way. You give, they are helped, and it never reverses. That can feel like generosity. It is closer to distance. The bonds that actually hold are not built on one person being endlessly capable. They are built on exchange, on each of us getting to be useful to the other in turn.

When you will not let anyone help you, you think you are protecting yourself. Mostly you are protecting your ego, and weakening the very connection you say you want. You are opting out of the quiet trade that turns a group of people into a community. A room full of self-sufficient people who never need each other is not closeness. It is just a lot of people taking their own pictures.

I feel this one most right now, traveling with a baby and leaning on my parents more than I am used to. Every time I ask, some old reflex says I am imposing, when really they would be hurt to be left on the outside of it. The help was never the burden. The asking just feels like one.

I do lean on people. I have a few who give me their time and their honest advice, and I go to them often. And still, I can put two people together and feel nothing but joy doing it, then sit alone on the one thing I need and tell myself I have got it. It is how a lot of us were raised. Solve your own problems, figure it out. Though I do wonder how much of that is human and how much is just the corner of the world I grew up in. Regardless, I’m not saying that is bad, I just want to get better at also flexing the muscle the other way, at catching where going it alone is quietly making my life harder than it needs to be.

So this week, my nudge to you is to aim it inward.

Pick one thing you are quietly stuck on, and think of the one person who has already been through it. Odds are they would be glad to help, maybe even relieved you finally asked. Send the note, make the call, reach back out to someone you have not spoken to in years.

The thing you would do for a friend without a second thought, do it for yourself.

You will take everyone else's picture. Let someone take yours.

Until next Sunday,
Eric

P.S. If this landed, forward it to the person you thought of while reading. Better yet, send it to the one you have been meaning to ask something of, and let the asking start there.