What you should not do for others

Maybe you are one of those people who is always ready to help others. You have a friendly character and you like to serve others, give them the best of yourself. You can often notice that, on the one hand, your efforts are not compensated with a real solution for the other’s problems; and, on the other hand, you do not receive help with the same care with which you give it. Perhaps this happens because you don’t know what not to do for others.

Your intentions are surely very noble. And, even if you collaborate with others without really expecting anything in return, you wonder why they are unfair to you.. You also get frustrated because, despite all the effort you put in, you finally fail to make a breaking point in other people’s difficulties.

What’s happening? That, sometimes, the best thing you can do for others is precisely to do nothing.

The butterfly that did not fly

Tells an old story that A man found a butterfly cocoon lying on the road. She thought he was in danger there and so she took him to his house to protect that little life that was about to be born. The next day she realized that the cocoon had a tiny hole. She then sat down to contemplate it and could see how there was a small butterfly struggling to get out of there.

The effort of the small animal was titanic. No matter how hard she tried, time and time again, she couldn’t get out of the cocoon. There came a time when the butterfly seemed to have given up. She stayed still. It was as if she had given up.

So, the man, Worried about the fate of the butterfly, he took a pair of scissors and gently broke the cocoon., side and side. I wanted to make it easier for the little animal to get out. And she achieved it. The butterfly finally came out. However, when doing so, its body was quite swollen and its wings were too small, it seemed as if they were bent.

The man waited for a long time, assuming that this was a temporary state. He imagined that soon, the butterfly would spread its wings and fly away. But that didn’t happen. The animal remained crawling in circles and thus died.

The man was unaware that The butterfly’s struggle to get out of its cocoon was an essential step to strengthen its wings. In this process, the fluids from the animal’s body passed into the wings and this is how it became a butterfly ready to fly.

Not intervening is also helping

The moral of this story could be described like this: do not do for others anything that they can do for themselves. From trying to help others selflessly to adopting a saving role that hurts them, and hurts us, there is only one step. Facing problems or adverse situations on our own strengthens us and teaches us.

Helping without someone asking or making gigantic sacrifices for others can be a big mistake.. We can be motivated by an authentic feeling of generosity, but the motivation can also be a secret desire to generate dependencies on us from others.

With that unlimited help we can make the people around us become passive and selfish. Furthermore, we intervene in their development and are probably contributing to ensuring that they never “spread their wings.” Even though our will may be the best, we run the risk of shaking hands and having our arm taken. Some people may come to think that what was initially helpful will eventually become an obligation. That is, when we do not help them, we may be the object of reproaches.

In this way, it is easy a person can stop being the savior and become a victim of the “saved”. It creates the conditions to be the object of exploitation by others and it is others who take control over it. It is a situation in which no one wins.

We each walk our own path

Avoiding efforts or struggles from others is also preventing them from achievements and freedom. The secret is to shake hands with others when they need it, not when they want it.. Someone in a vulnerable condition demands our help, our solidarity: a sick person, physically or emotionally; someone who is in conditions of limitation; another that requires a specific contribution to move forward.

The other secret is to offer concrete help. Helping someone does not mean adopting them for life. This applies even with children, because the purpose is to help them fly and not keep moving in circles forever. So solidarity, properly understood, offers specific aid, not indefinite-term support contracts.

Help, support, encourage… Any kind of contribution is good at the right time. So it is good to remember that if someone has an exam, we can help them study, but we cannot take the exam for them. An Eastern maxim says that ““It is better to do our duty than to do the duty of another, no matter how well we do it.”.

Great truth. Did you know what you should not do for others? Have you ever realized that your help was a burden?

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