In my book, In It Together, I point out that, in general, you cannot help someone who doesn't truly want to help themselves. At best, you can only help someone help themselves, and even that often merely is yet another euphemism for toxic enabling and toxic pseudo-loving codependency.
Enabling (i.e. being an enabler) is not kindness, and codependency is not love.
I think those who read my book will share my view that the real goal isn't even to help others help themselves. Rather, the real goal is for you to help yourself (i.e. be happy yourself in your unique present right now), instead of using other people's unhelped selves as a scapegoat for your own unhappiness.
I explore that idea in more detail in the following two topics:
- Whether you are looking for a savior or someone to save, or both, look into a mirror.
- There will always be more externals to chase. Those who seek to save the world as a means to save themselves do neither.
One who accepts and fully agrees with everything I have written above, including the two linked topics, might still wonder, how can we tell the difference between (1) toxic enabling (i.e. being an enabler) versus (2) acting out of true loving kindness without toxic enabling. One might ask, is there a way to do our best to lovingly help someone else help themself without being a toxic enabler?
I think the potential confusion clears itself up and the answers become obvious if we first understand and earnestly acknowledge the three very different elements of a choice or chosen action.
As cliché examples, let's consider these three scenarios:
Hypothetical Case A -- Your 30-year-old adult child who has been addicted to drugs for years comes knocking on your door, claiming to have a job interview or such, and they want you to give them some cash for a haircut and to buy an outfit for the interview, and they have excuses why the only way you can help them is to give them cash (e.g. instead of letting them borrow a tie or take them to the hair salon yourself and pay the salon directly).
Hypothetical Case B -- You are walking along a sidewalk in downtown and a seemingly homeless drug-addicted man, who is about 30-years-old, who you never met before, asks you for some cash or spare change.
Hypothetical Case C -- You are on a diet, experiencing hunger pain/discomfort, and have some delicious fattening ice cream in your fridge, and also a comfortable couch in your living room with a big screen TV, but also you have a membership at your local gym.
When reading my examples below, take note that when I refer to a proverbial "drug addict" in those examples below, it refers equally to Case A and Case B above (i.e. to both the beloved drug addicted child who comes knocking at your door, as well as the random drug-addicted homeless stranger on the street).
Below are the three elements of a choice.
(1) The direct controllable action you choose to take:
- You could give money to the drug addict.
- You could not give money to the drug addict.
- You could eat a delicious bowl of ice cream right now.
- You could not eat anything right now.
- You could go do a workout in the gym right now.
- You could sit on the couch and watch TV.
Keep in mind, in the lingo of my book, your so-called 'future self' (i.e. an older version of the human in the mirror) is much of an "other" as a literal biological child or a random stranger on the street, no more and no less.
(2) The uncontrollable and unpredictable results of that action, against which one might (or might not) have hopes, fears, expectations, or rough guesstimated predictions of unknown truth value:
- The cash given is not spent on drugs and ultimately truly helps the drug addict get off drugs and become a sober self-responsible happy person.
- The cash given is spent on drugs and only worsens the addiction, and perhaps even results in a lethal overdose.
- The refusal to enable the addict by giving cash causes them to learn self-responsibility and ultimately get off drugs and become a sober self-responsible happy person.
- The refusal to enable the addict by giving them cash causes them to miss a job interview and then they get sad and do more drugs.
- Shortly after you choose whether or not to give the addict money, the addict unexpectedly gets hit by a bus and dies regardless, causing your decision to have been rendered utterly moot.
"Success is as dangerous as failure. Hope is as hollow as fear. [...] Hope and fear are both phantoms that arise from thinking of a body as self. When we don’t have a body, what do we have to fear? See the whole world as your self. Have faith in the way things are. Love the whole world as your self; then you can care for all things."
- Tao Te Ching, verse 13
To hope for X is to fear -X. Hope and fear are really the same one thing, and they are a phantom that the lovingly brave transcend.
(3) The reason, if any, why you took the seemingly controllable action you took:
- Are you trying to control something you cannot?
- Are you unhappy (i.e. lacking inner peace) in the present and think that taking that action will help you achieve happiness (i.e. inner peace) in the future?
- Do you have expectations? Do you expect gratitude? Do you expect something to happen?
- Do you expect or desperately hope the uncontrollable or unpredictable effects of your action (e.g. whether or not the addict gets off drugs) to affect whether or not you are happy (i.e. have inner peace)?
- Is your action an attempt to control that which you cannot control?
- Are you taking self-responsibility and exercising self-discipline (a.k.a. spiritual freedom)?
- Are you seeking to impose on the self-responsibility of someone else or impose on the freedom of someone else?
- Are you practicing the principle of live and live? Or are you taking undue responsibility for someone else, or something else out of your control, in lieu of leaving each to their own self-responsibility?
- Are you attempting to clean someone else's proverbial backyard first? Or are you practicing the principle of clean your own backyard first?
- Are you attempting to clean someone else's proverbial backyard at all? Or are you solely cleaning your own proverbial backyard?
- Is your action at all based in dishonest denial, such as dishonest denial of what you can control/change versus what you cannot control/change?
- Are you being completely and totally honest with yourself?
- Are you trying to control or manipulate the behavior of others? If so, why?
- Are you acting out of conditional love? If so, what are the conditions that define the limits of your conditional love?
- Are you acting out of unconditional love?
- Are you acting out of hate? Or anger? Or fear?
- Are you acting out of addiction to comfort? Or are you to comfort what a brave person is to fear?
- Do you fully and unconditionally accept that which you cannot control? In other words, are you acting from a mindset of radical acceptance and total surrender to truth?
- With the answers to all the previous questions in mind, why are you taking the action you are taking? Do you even need a reason? Or is it done so freely that it seems to say that true freedom entails a type of freedom from whyness itself? Perhaps it is to say that when you truly act of true unconditional love it is to act without a why (i.e. a condition) at all. Complex philosophy aside, is it possible to live your life in such a way that every night you can go to sleep and honestly and happily say to yourself, I did each thing I did today simply out of true unconditional love?
- Do you choose that action out of true happy free-spirited loving kindness without any expectations regarding the future or behavior of others including your future self?
With the above in mind, I think it's easy to see and know the difference between (1) toxic enabling, versus (2) true loving kindness.
It's not so much about what you do, but about why you do it.
To paraphrase a memorable part in my own book, you will always know the truth in your heart of hearts and your godliest parts.
With love,
Scott
a.k.a. Eckhart Aurelius Hughes
- Scene from the TV show, Shameless (USA Version), in which Frank Gallagher runs one of his many scams to fund his alcoholism.
