The elevator doors opened on the second floor. There were four people in the elevator, and I was the only one who had a visible disability. Maybe that is why everyone turned to me suddenly: They wanted to know if I needed to exit the elevator first.
Actually, I needed to leave the elevator last. In one hand, I had my cane. In the other, I had a large rolling cart full of books that I needed to turn around.
“Please, go ahead. You first,” I smiled. The young couple said courteous goodbyes and left.
Then the other woman on the elevator surprised me when she said, “No, you first.”
Assuming that she was just trying to be polite, I said it again, “Please, go ahead. I think it will be easier for me to turn around this cart after everyone is off.”
“No, you first,” she answered. She said it with a gentle tone of voice. She thought she was helping. Again, I asked her to exit first. By that time, we had been standing with the elevator doors open so long, the warning buzzer sounded.
Finally, I gave up and took a step forward, turning the rolling cart in the extra-small elevator, trying not to run over her toes. Then I lost my footing and tripped, barely catching myself on the door frame.
“See?” she said. “I had to be the last one off because I needed to make sure you got off the elevator safely.”
As you can imagine, my eyes suddenly flew wide. My temperature rose. I did not need her to help me by following behind me. I needed her to help by going before me. I had told her how I needed to be helped, but she had “helped” the way she thought best. As a result, I stumbled and almost fell. Her helping hadn’t helped at all.
We nodded and went our separate ways, but I was tempted to explain to her a little bit about helping.
The perfect way to help someone distills down to one word: LISTEN.
Listening is not something we do easily. We seem to want to do everything but listen. Instead of trying to hear what other people say, we try to fix what we say. We have a national preoccupation with politically correct words and “difference terminology”–be it regarding disability, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or anything else. We are terrified of saying the wrong things the wrong way. But this places the emphasis in the wrong place. We need to shift our focus from our mouths to our ears.
We need to listen.
Listening is about discovering another perspective instead of projecting our own.
That is where the woman on the elevator taught me an important truth. Help, real help, always involves listening to what the other person needs.
How many times do I see someone struggling and ask if I can help, but then carry out my own version of help instead of offering the kind they would like to receive? I remember one time a roommate and I argued because I had done her laundry a few times. She had been especially busy with work that season, and I thought I was helping her. When she suddenly expressed her frustration, I asked her why she hadn’t told me before that she didn’t want me to do her laundry.
“I did tell you. You didn’t listen.”
Thinking back, I could not remember a single time she had said not to do her laundry, but it wasn’t because she hadn’t said it. Maybe I hadn’t heard her because my own inner voice was so loud. I couldn’t hear my friend’s preferences over the volume of my own. To me, if someone did my laundry occasionally, that would be a terrific help. Come over and wash and fold and iron and hang laundry for me any day. Doing laundry for me is one of “my helps.” It isn’t one of hers. I guess my subconscious didn’t want to hear what “her help” was because then I might have to do something I didn’t want to do.
Be aware, there are situations in which people need to be kept from the kind of help that they think they want, such as when a person with a prescription addiction asks a doctor for a refill. Some people do not know how to name “their help.” But most people do.
The best rule of thumb for the kind of help that really helps?
Ask first.
Then listen.
We should be people who practice attentive listening in order to hear the ways that other people indirectly (or directly!) ask for the help they need. If we offer the kind of help that we want to give instead of the kind of help they want to receive, then our helping won’t be helping at all.
And they might have been better off if we had done nothing.