Helpful AF
My go-to local in the west coast fishing village posted about how it’s been a year and their fervent wish for this last month to be at the least, a little less trying.
The post resonated not the least because, it has been a trying year indeed. I share as much with the Dervish in an unexpected call and she lets me sit with my statement for a while. Behind her is the blue seascape that I’ve known since childhood and a fair bit of my early adult life. Together with the rest of what’s not-going and going on, I have a sudden bout of birth village home sickness. It’s enough to send me over the edge of emotion. After some moments, we close off the call so I can continue to emotion in private. A day later we reconnect and while I’m less inclined to emotion all over the place, the weight of being in a world so anti-human remains.
This feels like one of our first conversations from the early years, says the Dervish. You can barely hold yourself together. Have you experienced more close grief or have you fallen in love? The friendly jibe is enough to get a laugh out of me and the Dervish gently walks me through the minutiae of daily life until we’re both a little more settled.
Thank you for that kindness, I say.
Afwan. We are as we are and you are a lot, even too much at your best and more so when you’re not. Likely we all are like that; you’re just less careful about keeping it hidden in my presence and that’s the highest compliment you pay me. This space is sacred as is our intention in making and holding it for each other. So be free, be mad, be sad, be glad, just be for we cannot be any less than we are. Every time we subsume ourselves to keep up the facade, we add to the weight that’s already dragging us down. There is no shame; in fact there is glory in being deeply affected by the pain human beings experience in negotiating this world (dis)order. But enough of me reminding you of what you already know and from what I see from afar, are practising with some degree of mastery even. What ails you? And how can I be helpful, she adds.
Not much ails. The admin of life ebbs more than it flows right now but that’s okay. I’ve seen this before and I hold the faith that everything about the admin of life is exactly as it should be. What saps my strength is the wrestling with old ghosts. The desire to be helpful to the humans in my orbit that are in obvious pain, that are hurting. I want that hurt to stop, I want to wave a wand and send Cinderella off to her ball. Foolish, right?, I ask.
Foolish? Absolutely it is, you’re no fairy much less anyone’s godmother and what is Cinderella but a backward heteronormative capitalist’s wet dream? If you’re going to make magic happen for people, at least be a little creative, she replies.
Suitably chided and rolling with laughter we again meander through the admin of life for a bit. The Dervish says, Resisting the urge to offer words of advice to a human you care for or any being for that matter is almost the hardest thing you’ll ever do. Look at me, entertaining an absconded novice despite your abandonment of the path in favour of thankless toil for a survivalist materialist existence.
I’m properly laughing now; at the deep truth of her summation of my more recent life choices.
The actual hardest thing you’ll do is to let go of the idea that you can fix something for someone else, she continues. You know well enough that the desire to do so is entirely natural and may that desire never leave your being, InshAllah. Up to this point, our feelings and empathy are normal and healthy. It’s wanting to go further where we tend to land on the stony ground of Life; wanting to take away the pain, discomfort, hurt et cetera. We can’t do that. The pain is already there. The anguish of doubt and questioning the self is already in place. You cannot remove that, only that human being can do that. You can offer practical help and I don’t mean the usual ‘you should see a therapist’ or ‘you need Jesus in your life’. I mean actual admin things like making someone chicken soup when they have a flu instead of asking what you can do.
The Dervish continues; You, more than most, know the journey is necessary, even essential for us to grow into ourselves and reach towards the light. When we try to help, consider that we might also unconsciously apply additional judgement to the situation. To crown our hubris we might even imagine we know the solutions to their miseries and trials. Now tell me dearest fellow traveller, how is any of that helpful to a human being already experiencing distress? You might want to consider instead, how you can learn to sit with the discomfort of feeling helpless at this human being’s obvious pain. Therein lies the mystery and magic of walking beside someone on their journey instead of trying to get them to choose your path.
Maybe it’s enough that they know you’re a hands reach away if they stumble. That you hold space for them in your heart and mind, in your prayers, words and deeds. That they know it’s okay to be their messy, tired, doubtful self around you. That it’s okay to call and then sit in silence because it’s too much to have to speak today. Working towards being so might serve our collective journey towards the light more than wallowing in emotions about how you’re feeling helpless.
Oh and Merry Christmas if we don’t speak again before then; she ends.
Helpful AF is an abbreviated conversation about how-to-human but then, so is every conversation with the Dervish.
© Jesh Baker for Oppi Stoep 2023, All Rights Reserved
