"Help" is a Four-Letter Word
This morning I watched a documentary called Risky Drinking that profiled maybe five different people with varying degrees of binge drinking habits or lifestyles. My experience viewing this film left my stomach feeling a little swishy because nearly all of the vignettes felt like they could have been lifted from my own life experience in some way shape or form... But what actually got to me? Right at the very end when the filmmakers added some notes about "where these people are now," the final screen read like this: The first half of the message displayed first and it gave me pause in the same way the word "help" in this context gives me pause anymore. I can tell you from very personal experience how futile and useless the word help is. You can help someone paint a wall. You cannot help someone see things they don't want to see, change things they don't want to change, make choices they don't want to make. You can support, you ...