Why is it so hard to ask for help?
Last week in Berlin, I found myself waiting at a bus stop late in the evening. According to the schedule a bus was due shortly, but 15 minutes went by and no bus showed up. I walked over to look at the printed schedule and noticed a handwritten note pasted to it in fading ink. I could make out my bus number and a very long German word I couldn’t even begin to pronounce, let alone translate. I contemplated asking someone if they could decipher it but instead I stood there trying to decide what to do next.
As I thought about taking an Uber or walking to the next stop, a young man approached me and said, in English, “I’ve been waiting for the 200 for half an hour now. Can you read that sign?” In an instant we two complete strangers were connected by our joint problem. He opened Google and asked me to read the letters out loud while he typed them in. We got the translation — the stop had been moved to a different street. We decided to walk there together and ended up having an interesting conversation about short stories, global events and being foreigners in the city.
None of that conversation would have happened if he hadn’t approached me. It got me thinking about why I hadn’t asked for help. It was such a simple and mundane situation. Yet I’m not the best at asking for help when I need it. And I don’t think I am alone in this. The bus stop example is minute but many of us find it hard to reach out to others when we face challenges. Why is that, and what do we lose when we fail to ask for help?
I am so moved by Tracey Emin’s 2007 painting, “Trying to Find You 1”. The outline of a woman’s naked body is painted in red. She kneels on all fours, her elbows and forearms on the ground, her head resting on her arms. There is a felt heaviness to her posture, as though she can barely keep herself upright. There is a desperation in this body, and a sense of supplication.
The canvas is split horizontally. The upper part is coloured cream, but the lower part, where the figure’s head rests, is daubed in olive-green paint. It is as if she is being submerged in the mire, weighed down by whatever she is enduring emotionally and physically. I am struck also by the fact that she is alone in this seeming moment of despair. And yet the title is “trying to find you”. Many of us do not reach out to others at times when we feel emotional distress. An element of embarrassment or shame kicks in, making us believe that admitting our pain would reveal something deeply wrong with us. If we believe in that lie, then it leads to another wrong belief: that our emotional and mental pain makes us less valuable in some way.
I know this posture. I have had moments in the past that have taken me to the ground like this, moments when I desperately wanted to be able to reach out to someone, but it seemed such a terribly difficult thing to do, until it became unbearable to weather the experience alone. When we are unable to ask for help, I think we add to our own suffering. In a way, it’s also denying the reality of what it means to be human: that challenges, feelings of being overwhelmed and in pain, are part of life. No one can escape these experiences, and we all need people in our lives to help us through those times.
There is something intriguing to me about the 1881 painting “Un coup de main” (“The helping hand”) by French artist Émile Renouf. An elderly man and a child, presumably a grandfather and granddaughter, are rowing a fishing boat on a calm, grey-blue sea. Mist and fog hang in the air. The man, his hands gripping the oar, is doing all the work; the young child’s hands simply rest on the wooden shaft.
The grandfather leans back as he pulls the oar, comfortable and familiar with what he’s doing. The fishing boat and the sea are his terrain. He looks over at the girl with slightly worried eyes and a small smile. She is sitting straight upright, her lips tightly closed and a distant, somewhat frightened look in her eye.
There are many ways in which our childhood and upbringing can affect the way we feel about asking for help. I like to imagine that, even though the girl in the painting looks terrified, she is also beginning to learn a valuable lesson. Her grandfather, the adult who knows all about managing the boat and being out at sea, is asking for her help. He does not actually need it, but he is showing her that she has the ability to contribute, and that many things are achieved more effectively when people help one another.
So many people are taught that being independent is something for which to strive. To a certain degree, that’s right. There is much that can be achieved if one takes responsibility for one’s own life and learns ways to face challenges that arise. But I wonder if sometimes we take it too far, and forget the value and necessity of interdependence. Leaning on one another and seeking help are not signs of incompetence or weakness. They can actually be signs of wisdom, compassion, humility and foresight.
I think about those rare occasions when a runner falls during a race and another competitor stops to help them. It is always so moving to see because for a moment, we see the possibility of a world in which we move forward by helping each other, rather than one in which it’s every person for themselves. None of us can go back in time and change our childhoods, but we can stop and consider how those childhood experiences might play into our ability to ask for help, or offer it.
In Pablo Picasso’s 1902 work “Crouching Beggar”, a woman kneels on the floor, resting her body on her heels. Her eyes are closed and she is hunched over into herself. She is not actively begging, although it is clear she is destitute and in need of help. With her blue skirt covering her legs and the white scarf around her face, she brings to mind the Virgin Mary.
I like that there’s a sense of the sacred about this painting of someone who needs help. Offering help when we notice others in distress, and allowing ourselves to graciously receive it from others, feel like sacred moments in our day-to-day lives. When we are able to help others through a truly genuine sense of generosity and understanding of shared humanity, we too are given something in return. We remove ourselves, even if momentarily, from the centre of our lives.
Looking at this painting and imagining this woman on the side of a street somewhere, I find myself wondering how often any of us might have the answer to another person’s desperate prayers. Whenever we help one another, we open a portal to bring little miracles and signs of wonder to one another. Our actions become building blocks of our faith in humanity. Which is often where any god worth her salt shows up, in the flesh and blood of the middle of our aching lives.
Join Enuma Okoro and more at the FT Weekend Festival on Saturday 7 September
Enuma Okoro will talk at 12pm on ‘Portrait of a Black Woman: A Shifting Gaze Across Centuries’ as the FT Weekend hosts a full day of talks, tastings, signings and experiences across 10 stages at Kenwood House Gardens in London. Join us there or watch online with a digital pass.
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