On Offering True Help and a Meditation on Robert Graves' Theories that Poetry is True Magic

A ponderance on the preponderance of the words we use to indicate our support for one another and how a moment of realization is worth one thousand prayers - as it allows for action from the inside rather than awaiting a touch from the outside.

Something brief then, or rather a debriefing on said moment, when talking with another this week.

The conversation followed the usual sort of exchange - sharing news, catching up, and then a request for advice.  Not so far as help, because there was no great and dire situation.  We bantered a bit, the professional opinion was given and toward the end of the interaction, the following tumbled from the fingers (tumbled because that's the whole point of this column that the words were sloppy, fingers because conversation in our modern age needs a bit more specificity to it and this was happening over a various chat program between two computers).

"Whatever is needed.  Any way I can help, I will".

We said good night, and sometime between standing up and drifting off to bed and feeling sedentary in the chair that props up this wavering body when the words run thin, the conversation replayed in the mind and realization like a dull punch in the belly...that what was offered was not at all what had been meant.

***

Parsing the words is straight forward.  But first a detour.

Read back through weeks of the column (you don't really need to, but it is a figure of speech, let us agree on the concept so the effort is not required) and the word that you'll see infrequently to quite possibly not at all and never, is that of "I".  Don't like it.  Try not to use it.  There is so much first-person writing in the world today that there is always a cognizant attempt to turn the language in such a manner as to remove the singularity from the equation.

There are other reasons as well - an attempt at always speaking of the we.  A togetherness.  A Buddhist bent on things so that the self is the illusion.  All of these things, so as to have an effect on the tone and penetration of the work - as well as on the worker penning (again, a certain irony as the end result is typed) the piece. 

Thus, the realization that the proper offer should have been not "any way I can help" but "whatever help you need".

Again, parsing the words is simple and straight-forward.  The first response, laden with the single-letter capitalization, puts the burden on the other - find something for which help is available.  The latter puts the burden on the helper - and by burden we speak not as a pack animal but as a willing worker in the line and the Work (with a capital W).  And when offering assistance, it should be about the needy, and not the one who is needed.

One could take that last phrase and stretch it to so many other conversations...but let's leave that to those who like to take sides and fight, shall we?  For us, we can continue on the meditative quality of a better choice of words... 

***

This column had been written up to around this point, at least in some winter-wind-getting-in form (in other words drafty...or a rough rough draft) when another situation arose and put the thoughts, and the pending, penning, self-test, to the test.  Pass?  Fail?  A mulligan?  Let's find out.

Out in the world, visiting a dear friend in Bethel, who, unexpectantly, dropped some surprise news about opportunities arising (sadly, dear reader, it is not something that there is privy to tell and so for the vague-fluttering in this portion of the piece, you have my sincere apologies - but some news is beholden to privacy and simplicity and the laws governing lack of drama and that of a proprietary nature which begs a bit of cautiousness...at least for the time being).

At the end of hearing the whys and wherefores, and also the what-may-comes, wanting to offer up support and encouragement to friends who have done so much for us...again the words came out all wrong.

The determination of "wrong" of course comes only from the inside - as there is no absolutism in this view - just a desire to make change (and let us trade to you a paper dollar for four quarters every day...can one figure out why, exactly?  If so, leave a comment below).

As the feet trekked down the stairs toward the sunny day that had finally encouraged some adventures to be had, the head started shaking back and forth and the folly was realized.  Putting the desire for a shift in the consciousness, into action, back up the stairs the boots tromped, and a note was left that, to paraphrase said this very thing - been trying to change the language used, it shouldn't have been the words "any way I can help" that notated out support, but "whatever help you need" so it is far clearer that our full support is unwavering and not dependent on any other variables but love.

***

All of this is but words about words.  Yet, words...Words...they are the building blocks which hoist up the importance of perception, and such minor differences have the ability to create in ourselves changes underneath without our even realizing it.  Compassion, we're saying then, can be trained through a pattern of words, wrapping into the mind, and vibrating throughout the mouth.

Like magic, poetry, connecting neurons in the brain that don't ever disconnect.  If we can build our own tone and tale, then the most difficult task in the world is to untrain that which we have learned and built in ourselves.  A manual evolution, like a manual transmission, that we can get purring like a finely-tuned mobile...

For at some point we have to learn to often think of others before we think of ourselves.  Most of us will never learn it.  A small number will take it too far.  But, until we at least plant the seed that we might not always be right, and we're certainly, each one of us, nowhere near to the land of perfect, it is only in our common bonds (as opposed to our diversities - for often in this age our differences are used as wedges driven between us) that we will find any true possibility of creating a world we all want to live in and have no need to kill or even die for or worrying about either each morning we arise.