Urge to Help Others

May 20
Urge to help Others
Last Saturday I realized that Urge to help others (Even without any vested interest) can be catastrophic to a relationship.
I learnt that the hard way, now my already emaciated group of friends is tinted into a triangle where 2 angles can never meet.
But the exciting/learning part of the whole incident is not its geometry but its origin.
I thought (with all good intentions) to take a self help audio cassette to ma friend’s place Mr. B and decided instead of wasting time and laundering around, we would do something constructive and probably after listening to inspiring words make a life chart to have a path and focus in life.
What I didn’t do however is to keep in mind that this cassette is, as the name suggests " SELF Help" and has best results only if done on individual basis and not as a collective society improvement plan.
So as it turned out I, and Mr. C went on our (selfless) journey to correct the Miserable life of Mr. B.
Initially Mr. B liked it, we sat down with him writing his life plan, what all he needs to improve his otherwise miserable, and pathetic lifestyle.
30 minutes into the life changing exercise (pun intended), Mr. B started getting the feeling that he has been singled out and call it our lack of diplomacy and tact or our strong belief that In friendship we have to be honest and straightforward, on a couple of occasions we convinced him (or tried to) that our life is better than him and he is the one who needs help. And by the way we are doing it selflessly with no vested interest and all this is in his benefit.
The sane readers must already be laughing at us and would have predicted the outcome of our otherwise Good intentions Helping a friend plan
Being singled out and convinced that he needs help and all this while he had been living a loser’s life, Mr. B as predicted got defensive.
And in tune with my precedent about people with defensive frame of mind, he became illogical and vague and crazy. He tried to take solace in spirituality and whatever shield he could from the onslaught of our selfless Urge to help him.
Even then we didn’t learn the gravity of the situation, and I in particular went on to accuse him of having split and twin personality. The Urge to help our friend (selflessly by the way) reached such dizzy heights that he finally said, who the fuck started this topic, you guys have wasted my weekend.
Now I personally know exactly what has happened.
Self improvement comes from within. No body has a right to change your way of living
I read somewhere "Stay away from people who want to help you selflessly. Problem is with them, not you.
Ideology is individual. We are never in a position to comment or look down upon on a person’s life style, What’s ideal for us may b looked down at by someone else.
There is an art to criticizing, if you don’t know the art, you don’t practice it. Playing with fire and not knowing the tricks of the trade will burn your hands.
Criticizing works only if you talk about your mistakes first, make sure you are not singling out a person and most importantly let the other person save face.
No matter how close ur friendship is, you cannot cross the line in shield of being honest and straightforward.
Trying to rectify the situation, I had a long discussion with Mr. C about the above mentioned points to which he said," Mr. B is a closed person, I was trying to help him for his own good and he just closed himself and instead accused me for ruining his weekend".
To test the waters and see if the Problem is with Mr. B or the medicine I decided to give the low potency doze to Mr. C and I asked him how come you don’t have a steady or meaningful relationship at the age of 26, is there something wrong, are you doing something about it, how do you plan to improve your love life.
No prize for guessing, Mr. C got defensive and said, I am happy the way I am, I won’t chase anything, There is no need Its Ok and almost insisted on changing the topic

And to have a double check I asked myself the same question, what if somebody tries to help me (selflessly by the way), well the answer is hats off to Mr. B for at least participating for good 30 minutes, I will shoo the person away as if it’s a dirt fly.
So my conclusion is that this bitter drug of Urge to help others (Criticizing) works the same way irrespective of person concerned. It’s a sure shot way of inflating/hurting the receiver’s ego and blasting the relationship in the process