Question shy
Self-reliance is a wonderful ideal. Who doesn't want to be resilient, make their own choices and solve problems. But asking for help often proves much more difficult than being self-reliant. And I know how that feels. Ever since I was two years old, I cried, "I can do that myself!" I found it scary, exciting and uncomfortable to ask for help. My craving for control and independence was compromised with it. As if I was failing if I couldn't do something on my own. And honestly? Sometimes I still feel that way.
The Volkskrant wrote aptly about this phenomenon last weekend. It is not only shame or pride that holds us back, but especially the confrontation with ourselves. With what we temporarily or permanently cannot do (anymore), with an altered self-image. We have become so used to the idea that we have to be able to do everything ourselves, that we have forgotten what it is like to ask for and receive care and love.And you see this not only in the care or social domain. Look at how companies handle "customer care. Customer service departments that no longer want to be called; I worked on this myself at KPN. Where you have to solve your own problems via chatbots, self-help tools and endless FAQs. The message is clear: be self-reliant, solve it yourself. Only if you really can't figure it out, maybe you can talk to a human being.
Have we become so focused on efficiency and autonomy these days that we have forgotten about giving as well as receiving care? What I have learned along the way is how beautiful it is when you can receive the warmth, love and care of others without it immediately becoming a scale of "now I have to give something back." Sometimes you can just lean on someone for a moment. Without guilt. Without obligation. Just because you are human.
Self-sufficiency should never mean going it alone. Real strength lies in realizing that sometimes you need others-and that that's okay. Collaborative care, in other words. Perhaps that is the lesson we need to relearn in prevention, in organizations and in customer care: that caring and asking for help is not a weakness, but an essential part of being human.
What do you think? How can we learn to receive better?
