As the Clock Ticks Down on 2020, Let's Ask for Help and Offer Help
54 Million people in America are facing food insecurity during the pandemic. Lines and waits at food banks have grown to epic proportions. More and more of our fellow citizens are asking for help amidst financial strain, unemployment (or under-employment), and illness. This is the time to challenge our age-old American credo that we should lift ourselves up by the bootstraps. It should always be okay to ask for help, which shows strength, not weakness. In different ways, at different times in our lives, we all need help at some point.
Our culture is plagued by a “bootstraps” mentality. Many Americans believe that people should only ask for help as a last resort. Americans seeking support through social welfare programs are often labeled as “lazy” or “taking advantage” of the system. This is the cold messaging of an individualistic culture. As Ibram X. Kendi might agree, these labels are racist rhetoric, because they fail to recognize the systemic issues that undercut opportunities for all people.
At an early age, many kids internalize the message that it is safer to “suck it up” and feel ashamed to ask for help—be it social, financial, emotional, educational, or other. Our culture is full of wounded survivors of past and present traumas. Unfortunately, the cycle, unchecked, continues.
During the pandemic, there is an opportunity to reckon with privilege, values, and our own basic humanity. Do we have a moral obligation to help when others are suffering? When we help others, do we become better versions of ourselves? When others are struggling with basic needs (e.g. food, shelter), can we justify extravagance in our lifestyles? If capitalism, in its current state, breeds gross inequities, (which we know to be true), how can we address this systemically…like, NOW?
Quarantined at home in the last days of a year most would prefer to erase from memory, and physically separated from one another, we owe it to each other to think more deeply about matters of life, death, and human dignity. Without as much social distraction and running around, the pandemic has laid bare the tragedies of our current system.
We can heal the scars of a dark regime by growing an abundance of compassion, heeding instinctive concerns for others and finding a well of strength in our communities. It is time for alternative messaging: that it is ok to struggle, that people do care about other people (i.e. what many of us tell our kids), that there is hope and light in the world, and that most of us would extend a hand to a suffering human.
As a new presidency dawns, let’s all take a breath, reconnect with our values, our moral compasses, and envision a brighter, more compassionate, and sustainable world—one that we all deserve. Let’s do it for each other, together. Let’s do it for our children, and our living planet. After all, caring about others and ourselves is essentially one and the same; our destinies are intertwined.