This afternoon, my dad, my uncle, my cousin and I were repairing some barbed wire fence on our land. It's a pretty routine procedure that gets easier the more helping hands you have. One person can keep the wire out of the way, one person can check the tenseness of the wire down the line, while the other people can work the 'come-along' that pulls the barbed wire tight. In this situation, it was two older men and two younger men working the task. At one point, my uncle, one of the older men, was kneeling on the ground to fix the bottom wire, while I was standing above him keeping the rest of the barbed wires out of the way. As he was finishing up, he reached out his hand to me. I had no idea why; I just thought he was waiting for me to hand him some pliers or some tool that I knew I didn't have, so I just sat there staring at his hand wondering what he was doing. After a minute of waiting and him still awkwardly holding his hand out, I asked what he needed, and he simply said, "I just need a hand getting up."
Oh.
Now, I felt terrible. Here I was just staring at a man struggling to get up, and I didn't have the slightest idea. He's someone I know well and have worked with numbers of times, and he's family, yet I still didn't know he wanted/needed help even though he didn't specifically say it. I wasn't aware of the situation. I couldn't recognize the real need.
Looking back on this simple incident, it reminds me a lot of what it's like going through life. It's easy to look past a person and not realize maybe they just need a hand. Sometimes thing become so routine, it's easy to look past what a person is really needing and feeling. My uncle needed help up. I thought he needed pliers. The man on the street may need someone to talk to. I think he needs money.
It's so easy to look past the real needs of a situation and try to fix them with something basic or material, like pliers. Sometimes, people don't always need exactly what it looks like they need. Sometimes it looks like someone could use a spare $5, when in reality, they could just use a spare five minutes of your time. Take a few moments within the next few days to slow down and just think: what is the real need in this situation. It's often not what you first think.
-Cliff
Cliff's Note: You can't fix everything with pliers; Sometimes you just need a helping hand.