Make A Real Difference Today. Ask For Help

“People are happy helping. It’s never hard to find help. It is only hard to know that it’s time to ask.”

Maurice Sendak,  Brundibar

As one who is reluctant to ask for help, Sendak’s quote struck home.

If you have children, you probably know who Maurice Sendak is. If you pay attention to the news, you probably know that Maurice Sendak died at the age of 83 on May 8^th. Sendak was a children’s author. Perhaps his best known book was “Where The Wild Things Are.”

I didn’t realize what an amazing man he was until I heard Fresh Air on NPR with Terry Gross on May 8th. Terry replayed four interviews she had done with Sendak over the years.

Brundibar” (2003), with text by the playwright Tony Kushner, is based on an opera performed by the children of the Theresienstadt concentration camp. The opera, also called “Brundibar,” had been composed in 1938 by Hans Krasa, a Czech Jew who later died in Auschwitz.

Now back to the quote I used at the beginning.

Many people, myself included, grew up with the myth of the rugged individualist who carved a path through the western wilderness all by himself. Think Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett and “Buffalo Bill” Cody. Imagine any western movie (“High Noon” is one of the better examples) where the hero, abandoned by the town, stares down the bad guy in a gun fight to the death.

Of course, those lone heroes are all anomalies. In the West in particular cooperation and helping one another were a necessity for survival. Living far from civilization required depending on one’s fellow human beings for help. This is true today as it was then. The next time you’re in an airplane going west at night, notice how few and far between are the lights between cities west of the Mississippi versus the fairly constant light show seen from the sky in the East.

But believing the myth of the individual acting alone, it may be hard to ask for help. Many of us have the belief that we’re weak if we have to ask for help.

As Sendak notes, the hard part is in the asking. People want to make a difference. They want to contribute to others. But no one can contribute unless someone is willing to ask for that contribution.

So the real difference is made not only by the person who provides the help but equally by the person who asks for it.

So make a contribution to someone today. Ask for help. Make a request. Make two. Or three.