Once, a man who was camping woke up early in the morning coughing and shaking violently. He was having a terrible time breathing. A stranger on a horse was passing by, and immediately jumped off the horse and began pounding the man in his back and pushing on his stomach. The man who was choking became even more terrified.
“Why is this man beating me when I can barely breathe?” he thought. But before more thoughts of anger and fear could consume him, he instantly spit up a scorpion that had crawled in his mouth through the night.
When he realized that the stranger was there to help, not hurt him, he turned to express gratitude, but the stranger had already mounted his horse and moved on.
The moral: Sometimes we get the help we need, not the help we want.
I cannot count how many people I’ve worked with through the years who believed that they did not need any help. I would say many people, in fact, believe that their problems are caused by others, not themselves. It is easier, after all, for people to blame others rather than to evaluate what part they play in their own angst. For example, when people are mandated to counseling or anger management, they tend to react with surprise and even anger: “How dare someone think I need help?!”
But the tagline I always say is this: There are two kinds of people in the world – people with issues and dead people. If you are currently alive, then you have issues, and you could use some support. And being alive as you are (and harboring issues), it might also bode well for you to be mindful of this advice: If one person tells you something one time, it might not be true; but if that same person tells you something more than once, or even more accurately, if more than one person tells you the same thing, then there is a very strong likelihood that whatever they are saying is true, and you just cannot see it. In short, if others are suggesting that you get help, it’s likely because they are seeing something that you are not seeing about yourself. As the story of the choking camper teaches us, help doesn’t necessarily have to come in the form that you want for it to come in the form that you need.
The next time someone suggests that you get some help or support for something that you are experiencing, consider taking a moment to reflect on the story of the man who was camping and got the help he needed, but did not want.