Can you ask for help? Can you? I don't mean the kind of "hey, I can't open this bottle of jelly for my PB&J...can you?" I mean the "I can't do it anymore...it's just not working...help me" kind of asking. (If by chance you struggle with even the opening the jar thing...I recommend you stop reading this and go seek professional help immediately!) For the most part, I don't really know anybody that likes asking for help. I know people that can, but again that usually refers back to not quite having the physical fortitude to pry open a lid to the strawberry jam. I'm realizing more and more that people don't ask for help. Somebody offers it and then they have a moment of grandiose realization that they are screwed up and thus accept the proposed aid. That raises two interesting observations about the inheritor of said offer. In order for the help to actually work, the individual must first recognize that there is a problem, but then must have the willingness to accept the help. But I don't really want to focus on that. What I want to look at is why it takes someone else having to come and point out our shit.

To be entirely honest. We all know when we are in trouble. Deep down we know something is wrong. We may be able to fake it...maybe even for a very long duration of time. But in the end, most of us are painfully aware when the catalysts have become simply addictions that are no longer helping the problem, but quite obviously enabling it. Example...one night I'm working at a coffee shop (cause I'm cool like that) and my cell phone rings. It is a particular friend who had been going through a particularly difficult experience. I answered the phone and was instantly greeted by the uncontrolled sobs of a person who had most certainly reached their breaking point. We all know that type of cry...the one where it pierces through your emotions and you suddenly find yourself wrapped in the other person's pain...this is the cry I'm listening to. Like myself this person is also at work, but preparing to leave, and they report to me that they are planning on going home, drinking the 5th of Vodka and taking all the pills in the pill bottle. Now, we can't have this. So I spring into super-rescue-friend-operation-do-or-die mode. I have another close trusted friend of mine go and pick up our mutual companion who was in dire need of help. Both of them eventually arrive back at the coffee shop, but not before the caller was able to consume a good part of the alcohol...and drinking on an empty stomach and being a light-weight never mix well with a large consumption of fine Russian liquor. Thank God, we got to this friend before they ingested the medication. What was interesting to me was the attitude and demeanor of my friend now. If you had met them at the bar, you would have thought they were the happiest person ever. Laughing, making jokes at falling over, wanting to hug everybody...all the stereotypical happy-drunk behavior. Totally different from the person I talked to on the phone. This is the conversation that followed.

jaymes. "why did you drink so much tonight?"

friend. "because now i don't remember...i don't remember ****** hurting me. i don't remember any of it!!!"

jaymes. "*****, tomorrow you're not going to remember falling down...you're not going to remember laughing so much...but you are going to remember why you started drinking."

I have never seen one person change emotions so quickly. Suddenly my friend who was content to probably spend the rest of their existence in an eternal state of perpetual drunkenness (as I found myself when intoxicated) became painfully aware that it wasn't going to go away and they needed help. I think this shows that there are two primarily flawed worldviews operating in our generation. The first is the inability to ask for help and the second is the failure to do anything for those of us slowly becoming more trapped in the grasp of addictions and behaviors that are not actually fixing any of our problems. That night it took a dear friend of ours to threaten doing something very damaging to themselves for us to notice that they needed help and didn't know how to ask. Some of us will do anything for a friend and others of us might actually be learning how to ask for help. But here is the issue.

We all know we are screwed up. That's obvious...you didn't have to receive some sort of intense training in psychology or sociology or any other "ology" to realize that our generation is plagued with the inability to acknowledge we need help and the apathy to do nothing about it. But I think that some of this does not rest squarely on the shoulders of this generation. Part of the problem has been that we don't know who to ask for help! If we don't trust or believe in the system before us, we are obviously not going to turn to them for some element of resolution...but we are too angry to be seeing with eyes of clarity who it is we can trust to guide us through this intense battle of finding our identity in a new worldview. Therefore we have begun to inherit the same problem as the generation before us. We are only evolving into a more vicious breed of complacent humanity. Unlike the previous generation, we have become content to simply sit and rot in the filth of our addictions, fully acknowledging their presence in our lives...whereas the generation before attempted to hide the existence of disturbing behavior and coping mechanisms from the public eye. Now, I am a full proponent for living honestly and openly. That being said...we've done a great job about being honest about all the shit in our lives...now we need to be honest about needing help to fix it.

It is hypocritical of a worldview to promote being openly honest about all their problems and hurts and brokenness...and then blatantly deny they have a problem in asking for help in healing all of those problems. Part of this stems from an ideal that we inherited from the previous generation. The "DIY" mentality. Make it on your own...carve your own way. Take care of yourself. Some of this also falls on the shoulders of those of us who have felt betrayed by everything and everyone we once believed trustworthy. If everything we once knew and believed in as true lets us down, the likely hood is that we are going to learn that we need to do it on our own. And many of us live this way. The fact is that humanity was never designed to be a culture that operated on individuality. Individuality is needed, but only in the greater organism of community. If one were to honestly look at our generation they would find that we are more inclined to be united in our movement then we currently are. We are all battling against a system that isn't working anymore, but we are too set in being "individuals" to see that we are fighting the same war. We are too proud to actually acknowledge that we need each other to overcome the issues that have so horribly raped our generation of its possible innocence and beauty. Thinking about this only exacerbates the problem in my life.

I was recently having dinner with some friends when one of them towards the end of our conversation asked me, "do you get depressed a lot?" Now, I've been fully aware of my cycles for quite sometime. But this was the first time that someone who was not really privy to that type of information called me out. When I inquired as to why he would ask me that, he stated that anyone who thinks about what I think about to any degree has to battle depression...no matter how lofty the ideals are. Yesterday I was having a conversation with another friend and this topic came up, and I realized through the dialogue that I was under the impression that I had no one to really open up to about my hurts. I have plenty of people that look to me as some sort of "guide" or whatever...but in the end, my perception of life is that I have no for me to turn to. Whether or not this particular statement is true, is besides the point. The point is if I am going to get better, I'm going to have to actively seek out people I believe are going to protect me and help heal me from my own depression.

But this is why we don't like to ask for help. At its core asking for help is an admission that we are actually unable to make it on our own. It is the acknowledgement that we are not as strong, smart, beautiful, fixed, athletic, ok, great, content, musical, academically inclined, spiritually knowledgeable, socially adept, as we would like to think we are. Here's the thing. It's ok. You don't always have to be so strong. I remember one night a friend came into visit at the coffee shop. I totally admire this person...they have always had a "I don't take shit...I'm super tough attitude" and they are really strong. This one evening they came in, sat down on a stool...I came around and said "what's wrong", and then this person just started crying. The reason they were crying was just because they had to say goodbye to a close friend who was moving away. Someone who is incredibly strong and tough still had a moment where they needed someone to listen or just hug them.

I don't care how tough you claim to be. I don't care how much you say you've endured and so now you can make it through anything. In the end we all need help. You. Me. All of us. And if you're one of those people who says "I just don't care"...we can help you learn to care. If you think this sounds weak and for people who are too feeble to handle life...we can help you see how strong you need to be to ask for help. You can't escape it. Eventually you are either going to break down and let someone help you up...or you break down and die.

much love.