Helplessness

“ Unable to change our place, or move hand or foot at our own pleasure, and forced to submit to every caprice of our possessors, we cannot be said to have even a will of our own. But every condition has its share of good and evil, and I have often considered my helplessness and dependence as mere trifles compared with the troubles to which poor sensitive human beings are subject. ”

“ We may come to love to be waited on more than is needful and thus grow into a fictive helplessness and dependence on the ministrations of others. We love to pour our troubles into sympathetic ears and may be spoiled by the too great devotion of our married partner, sons, or daughters, whom we sometimes permit to become slaves not only to our infirmities but to our very whims and notions. ”

“ But a time must come when our policy and bravery shall be equally useless; when we shall all sink into helplessness and sadness, without any power of receiving solace from the pleasures that have formerly delighted us, or any prospect of emerging into a second possession of the blessings that we have lost. ”

“ The sense of helplessness that comes upon her when every effort made, every possibility sounded, she realizes that the world has no place for her, and that she must either stoop to ask the assistance of friends or starve! ”

“ The helplessness is always a fact, though most of us manage to get along for the most part without discovering it. We are all outnumbered and overborne by the claims, duties, hindrances, sorrows, and entanglements of life. ”

“ It is a philosophy of helplessness, which, even if it succeeds in helplessly carrying its helplessness out—in doing away with suffering, for instance—can only do it by bringing to pass a man not alive enough to be capable of suffering, and putting him in a world where suffering and joy alike would be a bore to him. ”

“ And then, perhaps, we are brought into a state of darkness and despondency, to show us our utter helplessness and unworthiness, and the need there is for every one of us to "keep the heart with all diligence, for out of it are the issues of life.".... ”

“ Helplessness, particularly in its hours of suffering or its moments of unaccustomed pleasure, compels the sympathy of everyone, and every reporter is delighted with the opportunity to write a "sob story" picturing the friendlessness and the want of such unprivileged ones. ”

“ Indeed, I really feel very lonely, travelling all by myself, and am very much in want of protection, which is just what I am sure, sir, you are always ready to afford to a poor weak young creature, like myself, though whenever one complains of helplessness, it seems to make some people, that I could mention, more spiteful and tyrannical than ever! ”

“ I think it is in these commonplace anxieties that people most signally fail. If any very great sorrow comes, such as the loss of husband or child, then in our helplessness we rush to our God for help, and He bears us on. ”

“ Not bodily suffering wholly, or chiefly; but that which is much harder to bear,—the hardest of all,—a sense of helplessness and the increasing fear of uselessness; the conviction, in the very prime of life, that life's work must be left undone, a calling which he dearly loved be relinquished, and he either remain abroad a wanderer in search of health, or return home with only the capacity of projecting numerous plans and labors, not one of which would be ever accomplished. ”

“ Perhaps it is only human nature to inflict suffering on anything that will endure suffering, whether by reason of its genuine humility, or indifference, or sheer helplessness. ”

“ From experience, I can speak of the mental anxiety which must have likewise, with others, supervened, at the thought of one's entire helplessness, and the encumbrance one had become to others, who, God knows, had troubles and labour enough of their own. ”

“ What are the pangs of a mother, when she hears the moanings of her infant that, during the agony of disease cannot express what it feels? In her idea of what it suffers, she joins, to its real helplessness, her own consciousness of that helplessness, and her own terrors for the unknown consequences of its disorder; and out of all these, forms, for her own sorrow, the most complete image of misery and distress. The infant, however, feels only the uneasiness of the present instant, which can never be great. ”

“ Your helplessness persists because of your dependency upon some outside agency. When that dependency, fictitious or not, is not there then the feelings of helplessness and the desire to communicate in the abstract are not there. ”

“ But every person, in approaching the trials and helplessness of age, needs to consider that the very performance of these duties toward one’s self by all around may tend to induce a selfish and exacting spirit, or querulous complaints at forgetfulness or neglect. ”

“ Three months passed away, and the shabby mourning had grown more rusty—three months of sorrow and struggles for the bare necessaries of life—and then again the slow, creaking step of the doctor; the same anxious faces watching the hard-drawn breath and fevered countenance of another little sufferer—watching with aching hearts, and moaning in the bitterness of their spirit at their helplessness, their utter impotence to give relief. ”

“ Helplessness.—Opposed to stories depicting struggle for supremacy are those portraying the joys or the sufferings of the very old or very young, or of those who are physically or mentally unable to struggle. ”

“ The aggravation of helplessness through the open distribution of relief. (3) The resentment which succeeds the intrusion of strangers in relief leadership. (4) The reaction of lassitude and depression after a period of strain. (5) The desire for privacy during interviews. (6) The vital importance of prompt decision in preventing an epidemic of complaint. [74]
Analytic psychology is becoming increasingly interested in the phenomena of repression, inhibition and taboo. The real motives of action are often very different from the apparent motives which overlie them. ”

“ I tell you, men, what you have done to these, my kindred, you have done to me.
22. You have insulted me in your own home; I cannot stay. I will go forth and find that child, that woman and that man, and give them help until my life's blood all has ebbed away.
23. I call it pleasure when I help the helpless, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick, and speak good words of cheer to those unloved, discouraged and depressed. ”

“ And shall I hide the cause of my grief, and not dare to seek help or succour for my sorrows? He who is conscious of weakness is a fool if he does not seek that by which he may have health if he can find it anywhere; but many a one thinks to gain his own advantage and to win what he desires, who pursues that whereof he sorrows later. And why should he go to seek advice when he does not expect to find health? That were a vain toil! I feel my own ill so heavy a burden that never shall I find healing for it by medicine or by potion or by herb or by root. ”

“ We must bear the infirmities of the weak.—Very tiresome is a continual touchiness in a neighbour, or the perpetual recurrence of the same faults in a pupil or child. But if by self-restraint and right treatment God should enable you to cure those faults, from how much shame and sorrow do you rescue them, from how much suffering yourself.
3. We must bear one another’s trials.—With one is the burden of poverty; with another it is pain or failing strength, the extinction of a great hope, or the loss of some precious faculty. A little thing will sometimes ease the pressure. ”

“ Thou hast no right to bliss,
No title from the Gods to welfare and repose;
Then thou wouldst look less mazed
Whene'er of bliss debarr'd,
Nor think the Gods were crazed
When thy own lot went hard.
But we are all the same—the fools of our own woes! [449]
For, from the first faint morn
Of life, the thirst for bliss
Deep in man's heart is born;
And, sceptic as he is,
He fails not to judge clear if this be quench'd or no.
Nor is the thirst to blame.
Man errs not that he deems
His welfare his true aim,
He errs because he dreams
The world does but exist that welfare to bestow. ”

“ But this sparkling sensibility to one struggling under infirmity, or with grief or poverty, is very dreadful. The soul is too nicely and keenly hinged to be wrenched without mischief. How it shrinks, like a hurt child, from all that is vulgar, harsh and crude! ”

“ But if ever—in distress, peril, shame, poverty, or whatever anguish is most poignant, whatever burden heaviest—you should require a life to be given wholly, only to make your own a little easier, then summon me! ”

“ Thou canst trim thy body, and spend many a minute at the glass; dost thou not care for thy soul? How long thou takest to decorate thy poor flesh, which is but worm's meat, or would be in a minute if God took away thy breath! And yet all the while thy soul is uncombed, unwashed, unclad, a poor neglected thing. Oh it should not be so. You take care of the worse part and leave the better to perish through neglect. ”

“ We must say something to appeal to your pity, and the unvarnished tale of our life is too long and too dry, and not likely to excite your sympathy.” All this is true, but what is to be done to alleviate or to cure this terrible evil of poverty and beggary? ”

“ She had early in life been brought up in indulgence; and poverty had come upon her at an age, when the sensibility of the heart are most alive. There can hardly, indeed, be a suffering more acute to a feeling mind, that has experienced the pleasure of bestowing, than to find its means of benevolence cut off, and all its powers necessarily turned into a weary, wasting struggle for self-preservation. ”

“ Go, bury thy sorrow,
Let others be blest;
Go, give them the sunshine,
And tell God the rest.
ANON. Our veiled and terrible guest [Trouble] brings for us, if we will accept it, the boon of fortitude, patience, self-control, wisdom, sympathy, faith. If we reject that, then we find in our hands the other gift,—cowardice, weakness, isolation, despair. If your trouble seems to have in it no other possibility of good, at least set yourself to bear it like a man. Let none of its weight come on other shoulders. ”

“ I, you see, love the humble, those who are on the lower steps of life, more than I do myself; the sight of those who suffer, those who struggle, and are overcome by everything, simply tortures my [277] heart. We must give all of ourselves to those who have nothing. If many people felt in this way, there would be far fewer ills to comfort and less misery to be helped. ”

“ To whom is it of any real consequence whether or not I continue to fill a place in the world? I hope that involuntary uselessness will not be imputed, and that we may say, ‘They also serve who only stand and wait.’” A fellow-worker of the same sex, but made of sterner stuff, in the dedication of a book written in illness, tells her friend, “You know, as well as I, how withering would be the sense of our own nothingness, if we tried to take comfort from our own dignity and usefulness.” ”

“ Is an unfortunate person, beaten with the tempest, and on the point of perishing, at a loss how to implore assistance? Alas! doth the urgent necessity alone not amply furnish expressions? In the sole sense of our evils, do we not find that animated eloquence, those persuasive emotions, those pressing remonstrances which solicit their cure? Has a suffering heart occasion for any master to teach it to complain? In it every thing speaks, every thing expresses its affliction, every thing announces its sufferings, and every thing solicits relief: even its silence is eloquent. ”

“ But if you suffer I have nothing for you—nothing except perhaps a beggarly dole of bread—but no consolation for your trouble, no respect for your manhood, no pity for the sorrows of your miserable life. ”

“ And so fate, or rather Providence, took the reins from the weak, passionate hands that were so unfit to hold them, and threw him back, helpless and baffled, on his bed of pain; there to learn, week by week, through weary sickness and still more weary convalescence, the lesson that only suffering could teach him—that it were well to forgive others their sins, even as he hoped his might be forgiven. ”

“ Consider to whom you go—to poor souls whose life, compared with yours, is one long malaise of body, and soul, and spirit—and do as you would be done by; instead of reproving and fault-finding, encourage. ”

“ Who would think that the kindness and humanity, and self-denial, and patience in suffering, which we so drily commend, had been exerted towards ourselves, in acts of more than finite benevolence of which we were to derive the benefit, in condescensions and labours submitted to for our sakes, in pain and ignominy, endured for our deliverance? ”

“ The vice and unkindness of the world hath torn her tender heart. In whose bosom shall she repose the secret of her sufferings? Who will listen with pity to the narrative of her woe, and heal the wounds which the selfish unkindness of man hath made, and then sent her with them, unbound, on the wide and pitiless world? Lives there one whose confidence the sufferer might seek? ”

“ Consider, that the state of the poor sick man, of whom we have just now been speaking, how deplorable soever it may seem, might still be capable of some alloy or ease, or some degree of comfort: a good bed to lie on; a good friend to encourage or condole with him; a good conscience to support him; a will resigned to the will of God, and, in fine, a certain knowledge that his pains must shortly abate, or put an end to his life. ”

“ When you can’t help me—when you would only be trying to dissuade me from my purpose, and keep me from ever rising out of the slough of poverty in which I have passed year after year—why should I talk to you about what I am doing or expecting? ”

“ There are the miseries and wants of others to be lessened or relieved, calamity to be mitigated, the pale and throbbing brow of sickness to be cooled, the heart of the poor and neglected to be sustained and cheered, and the limbs of the weary to be clothed and rested. ”

“ Thus will your poor soul be circumstanced. You will stand, bereft of counsellors and friends, despoiled of everything which you had in the world, and accompanied by nothing but your own works. These alone, whether they have been good or evil, will accompany you to judgment. ”