“Let people help” – Advice that made a big difference to a grieving widow
npr.org
npr.org
He saw a vast hall with long tables covered in the most magnificent foods. But the people sitting there were skeletal and wailing in agony. As the Rabbi looked closer, he saw that every person had wooden slats splinted to their arms, stretching from their shoulders to their wrists. Their arms were perfectly straight and stiff; they could pick up a spoon, but they could not bend their elbows to bring the food to their own mouths. They sat in front of a feast, starving in bitterness.
The Rabbi then visited Gan Eden (Heaven). To his surprise, he saw the exact same hall, the same tables, and the same magnificent food. Even more shocking, the people there also had wooden slats splinted to their arms, keeping them from bending their elbows. But here, the hall was filled with laughter and song. The people were well-fed and glowing. As the Rabbi watched, he saw a man fill his spoon and reach across the table, placing the food into the mouth of the man sitting opposite him. That man, in turn, filled his spoon and fed his friend.
The Rabbi returned to Hell and whispered to one of the starving men, "You do not have to starve! Reach across and feed your neighbor, and he will feed you." The man in Hell looked at him with spite and replied, "What? You expect me to feed that fool across from me? I would rather starve than give him the pleasure of a full belly!"
It all makes sense for a religion steeped in a desert culture. Trees are (relatively) rare, and what they offer is incredibly important and life giving.
It would be cheaper and get better outcomes, but is still opposed because “working together is socialism”
Meta: downvotes to prove my point.
Both the article and comment you commented on eschewed a trite political message and tried to say something real and human.
If the parent had instead chosen to give a thoughtful response focusing more on a positive message (say, exploring how we should do more to help others and how universal healthcare can be a facet of that), that would've been fine. But yet another post of "my outgroup is evil" doesn't teach us anything or lead to good discussion.
Please educate me.
What possible reason is there to oppose universal healthcare?
Please keep in mind that factually it’s cheaper and results in better outcomes in every developed country in the world.
You are entitled to have whatever opinion you want on the matter, but that doesn't change the facts.
Indeed that is the only explanation I have ever figured out.
Developed countries don’t do that.
Personally, I’d be fine with universal healthcare on the state level, but not the federal. The fact that I have thoughts like that shows it’s not as simple as “durr everyone deserves healthcare.” Of course they do, but a universal healthcare system implemented poorly means that everyone gets really bad healthcare.
I find it interesting to dress it up in religion, because the optimal situation is to defect, and if everyone knows the game, you get a worse outcome. Religion can cause people to be selfless and you get a better outcome for most people.
I've always thought to teach people religion, but defect yourself. In a modern secular world, teach everyone ascetic stoicism. Myself, follow some sort of Machiavellian/Nietzsche/hedonism.
(Tit-For-Tat: Prefer cooperating, but if the other person defected on the previous turn, defect on the current turn.)
That’s not true. There is no optimal strategy in iterated Prisoner's Dilemma in the sense that defection is optimal in the single-round version; Tit-for-Tat performs well in certain conditions in iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, and less well in others (dependent particularly on the strategies played on the other side); in single-round, defection always produces a better outcome than defection independently of the choice made against it.
The purpose of the article and the story above was simple - you and I are the same ultimately
The golden rule is just that- when we recognize ourselves in others we act to minimize pain in others as we would to ourselves
Imagine the world as a one person play with each role played by the same person but in different costumes: you
By accident I discovered that if instead of imagining how you would feel if I did this bad thing to you, I imagined how the one person I loved would feel. Suddenly I had a working version of empathy, which I use to this day. I don't treat others as I would want to be treated - I treat them as I would want them to treat my loved one.
I have a nascent theory about human feelings, which goes that the basic feelings we experience are usually perceived through extensive filtering by our personal, social, cultural, etc., beliefs/experiences. The convincing conscious perception of a feeling may be misinterpreted to an extent. Anger is an emotion that can often become misdirected. Supposedly, sexual arousal can be interpreted in translation from fear[0].
Someone who is suicidal may consider suicide seriously, but feel an urge to live in the process of suicide. Circumstance may make certain feelings clear, but by examining removed from circumstance, the person had the capacity for both feelings. There is some "essence" to the person that those feelings, brought on by circumstance, only scratch the surface of. Observing a narrow range of circumstances and assuming it is the essence is a mistake.
I think that more or less every person, in their essence, understands human decency. It may be that some people truly don't have the capacity to appreciate it (thought: aliens?), but usually, I think the real culprit is learned behavior through various factors, and innate cognitive biases. I don't mean to say that it is easy to change people, because the opposite is generally true, but I think it is worth thinking about.
That said, if there was someone who truly needed to, say, murder the way we need to eat, I say that they would do no wrong by murdering, but that we would do no wrong by apprehending them. I wish to get to people at their essences, not their accidents.
the Stoics taught this over 2000 years ago. it is not what happens but how we categorise it that matters.
Perhaps it would work if there were very clear signs that the bereaved were unable to cope.
"Let me help you in the way I want to help, not in the way you actually need" is either short-sightedness or selfishness. But it's not actually helpful.
But the friends who think of what we need
They hardly talk at all, they just do it
-Chris Smither
I find it fitting the approach for new life and death can be the same.
I remember kid #1, we didn't remember to burp and he was fussy, but after that, its been fine.
I got some douchebag babies, because they were breastfeeding every 2-3 hours for a long time. Probably every 2 hours for the first few months, so that doesn’t allow for quality sleep cycles. It also takes a while to put them to sleep, so the total period of free time could be as little as 15 to 30 minutes.
The first one needed time to learn how to breastfeed (and the mom to learn also).
And also, physical recovery from tears in the flesh and other complications such as hemorrhoids and hormone fluctuations.
The mother and child’s health are likely a factor in this, surely? Depending on how the delivery went, there may be a period of recovery. Combined with disrupted sleep and newborn feeding, the combination can be rough.
We also had sleep shifts. Giving each of us 3 hours of solid sleep was like 2 REM cycles. Only needed to do ~2 per night and we were mostly normal.
100% not good medical advice.
We never got close to sorting the sleep routine. Well done.
i didn't have that, so i struggled, especially in the beginning, not because it felt hard, but simply because i didn't know what to do. the mechanics are easy to learn, feeding, changing, sleep, etc, but beyond that i simply had no examples to draw on. but i was able to compensate that with continuously being aware that this is what i wanted. i chose this adventure, and i was not going to despair over making that choice, nor would i regret it.
but we were also lucky, and our kids were not fussy and slept well. they got plenty of breastfeeding because nobody told my wife when or how to stop and she didn't complain, so she stopped when the kids were ready on their own.
So I try to act accordingly — help cook and tidy up the kitchen afterwards, help bathe the kids and/or put them to bed where appropriate, or just sit on the couch fiddling with my mobile when not interfering is the best course of action. Just slot into their routine and provide an extra pair of hands. For people you're comfortable with, socialising happens around these things just fine.
It depends on the age of the kids and situation, but visiting people can be helpful if done carefully.
From reading (likely too much) internet commentary about having babies I assumed I'd be completely exhausted and worn out from constantly giving the baby attention for the first few months. Then I discovered that newborns sleep literally 3/4 of the day.
The hard part is the disrupted sleep schedule when their newborn stomachs are small and they need to eat every few hours. It can be really hard to adjust for people who have lived their lives with 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep all the time.
Funnily enough, having lived with middle of the night insomnia and disrupted sleep my life I wasn't really bothered by the newborn feeding schedule (via pumped milk in bottles, my wife did the real work during the day).
The value of socializing for us, which I didn't expect at all, was to fill the boredom. We were lucky enough to both be able to take a lot of time off work at the same time, which combined with the newborn sleeping 2/3 to 3/4 of the day left us feeling unplugged from the world.
Everyone is different, though. I've had friends who just didn't want to see anyone or have other people in their house for the first few months, so we respected that. I know some people who got tired of endless visitors trying to help, while others lamented not having enough help. It can be tough to feel it out so try to be especially intune with subtle social signals and look for hints to take.
The other people thinking they know better then ypu and that you having kids mean you dont deserve agency anymore was the worst thing about having baby.
If you want to feed me, give me a DoorDash or Uber gift card.
That said, if someone was grieving and they couldn’t handle more than receiving delivered takeout, I’d happily send it, just as I’d accommodate another dietary preference when preparing a real meal.
I also had some bad experiences eating at my grandmothers (she was a terrible cook). I think her experiences in the Great Depression meant no food would go to waste. I ate so many years-past expiration foods when I was a kid. Have you ever had really intense food poisoning? Ugh…
I winced at that. 4 years.
I thought about why that is, and came to the same conclusion as you: when you are grieving you just need to be able to go through the motions, and not stressing about what foods to make is really helpful.
Well, your friend/acquaintance may not know how you can best help. Yes, if it's a widower who lost a home-maker wife, he may need help fixing meals or cleaning house or doing laundry. Vice versa for a woman who's lost her husband.
But if you don't fill them in on how you can help and the things you are good at doing they will not know how or when to ask you. And then you will not end up helping.
Be concrete and specific when you offer help. You could make a list of three things to do. Then present your list as a menu of choices. Or "D", something different.
Be concrete about your boundaries and schedules. Don't let them get carried away with using your services. Tell them you can give them a ride once a week to essential errands, for example. It is sometimes most helpful if there are multiple people pitching in.
Really, long-term, if I were in need, I'd want to go to a professional agency for most things. A professional meal-prep service, housekeeping agency, home care agency that sends licensed and bonded pros. My volunteering friends and neighbors are well-intentioned, but this can be fraught with difficulty if they are not good, or not-so-well-intentioned after all.
Many people will swoop in to take advantage of people who are perceived to be vulnerable, grieving, and willing to accept help. That's why some of us are skeptical.
0n some browsers, Reader mode (or Simplified Web View mode) can be used to view webpages or articles as simple text.
This may be need to be enabled in the Accessibility Settings of the browser.
e.g., Above poignant article can be viewed as Reader mode in Vivaldi browser, or Simplified Web View, on Android.
Of course, if it hadn't been for her dog propeller-tailing when I walked in the door and wondering where I was when I left, I probably wouldn't have gotten the chance. So I owe him my gratitude as well.