On Needing Help
One day, a man left the city for a weekend getaway in the country. He’d not been to this area before, and misjudging the side of the road, he swerved quite suddenly and ended up with half his car stuck in a ditch. The man climbed out of his car and grabbed for his cell phone, only to discover he had no service. Great, he thought, now I’ll have to walk.
He didn’t go far when he came upon a farm house and as he walked down the driveway, he glimpsed a skinny, sort of shabby looking donkey by the barn. When the man knocked at the farmhouse door, a kind-faced farmer appeared, nodding his head knowingly at the man’s story. “You’re not the first to go off our roads out here. Harvey and I can help,” the farmer said as he gestured to the skinny donkey. “Follow me.”
The farmer walked unhurriedly out to his barn, grabbed a long, thick rope, and Harvey the donkey, then began walking down the driveway to the road. Once the man pointed out his car, the farmer got to work. First, he attached the rope to the car, then to the donkey. And with that the farmer held his hands high in the air and began loudly clapping and proclaiming after each clap, “Go Stanley! (clap!) Go Billy! (clap!) Go Joseph! (clap!) Goooooooo Harvey! (clap!)” And with that final proclamation and clap, Harvey lunged forward, taking the car from the ditch back to the road.
The stunned man gazed, wide-eyed at the pleased farmer. “That’s amazing! I can’t thank you enough,” he said. “But one thing I don’t understand is why were you yelling out all those other names?”
“Oh, that,” the farmer replied, “well, old Harvey there is half-blind, but he doesn’t mind working at all. So long as he doesn’t think he’s alone.”
I first heard this story from Tara Brach and it’s a favorite of mine to tell. I think because, like Harvey, I often feel half-blind with exhaustion, with stress, with grief, with incompetence. And yet, if I know I’m not alone…well, some pretty amazing things have come from that awareness. From leaning into the support that is always and ever there, even when I can’t see it.
So friends, this is a letter to say, you’re not alone. And reaching out for a helping pull is such an important and essential facet of life. Because sometimes our own human will alone just isn’t enough—and the ability to work in the not alone, to let go into our vulnerability, might be what saves us from time to time.
This week, as I sat in the overwhelm of life, I sat to write a prayer of compassion that I might remember how interwoven to others I really am. I’ll share it with you:
May creatures everywhere be happy, healthy, and free.
May those whose string of hope and faith has grown too frayed to hold on be given a small wonder they recognize as a miracle.
May the hard feelings and harder suffering get absorbed into places of softness: hands, bed sheets, prayer shawls.
May the laughter of friends who know loss and keep meeting it directly be like a cloud of buoyancy delivering those who need help this day into those spaces of softness.
May we remember our sameness when our differences threaten to confuse our hearts.
May we honor life’s preciousness not by knowing answers but by meeting the questions together—with humor, tears, arms, ropes, life-lines, phone calls, beautiful corners of nature, bouquets of wildflowers, coffee, wine, good books, poems.
And may we remember we’re not here forever, but we may very well get today.
Love to you friends, today and in the week ahead. Perhaps write your own prayer of compassion. Start simply: “May all creatures everywhere be happy, healthy, and free.”
