| Making the Most of Life |
Chapter 15 |
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Then there are many ways of helping others. Some people help us in material ways. It is a still higher kind of help which we get from those who minister to our mental needs, who write the books which charm, instruct, and entertain us. Mind is greater than body. Bread, and clothing, and furniture, and house will not satisfy our intellectual cravings. There are those, however, who do help us in these loftier ranges. Music, poetry, and art minister both to our gratification and our culture. Good books bring to us inestimable benefits. They tell us of new worlds, and inspire us to conquer them. They show us lofty and noble ideals, and stimulate us to attain them. They make us larger, better, stronger. The help we get from books is incalculable.
Yet the truest and best help any one can give to others is not in material things, but in ways that make them stronger and better. Money is good alms when money is really needed, but in comparison with the divine gifts of hope, friendship, courage, sympathy, and love, it is paltry and poor. Usually the help people need is not so much the lightening of their burden, as fresh strength to enable them to bear their burden, and stand up under it. The best thing we can do for another, someone has said, is not to make some things easy for him, but to make something of him.
It is just here that friendship makes most of its mistakes. It over helps. It helps by ministering relief, by lifting away loads, by gathering hindrances out of the way, when it would help much more wisely by seeking to impart hope, strength, and energy. “Our friends,” says Emerson, “are those who make us do what we can.” Says another writer: “Our real friend is not the man or woman who smoothes over our difficulties, throws a cloak over our failings, stands between us and the penalties which our mistakes have brought upon us, but the man or woman who makes us understand ourselves, and helps us to better things.” Love is weak, and too often pampers and flatters. It thinks that loyalty requires it to make life as easy as possible for the beloved one.
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