Van Ree's Voice

There is something about helping others that I find addicting.

Though I am sure there has to be some kind of way that someone could solely support themselves and their family by helping other people everyday, I have not found that career path yet.

It’s extremely hard for me to see someone in need and not do something to help them - whether it be emotional, physical or monetary pain they are going through.

They say one person can change the world, and looking at past powerful figures, good and bad, this appears to be true time and time again.

But it’s hard to realize that one person most likely will never be able to help everybody. We may never see the day, even in later generations, where every child in poverty in the world is fed dinner every night or the genocides in Africa stop.

There are moments of hope in our lives where we see a slight change meant to stop some of the world’s problems. But it appears rather unrealistic that the world will ever be solved of all of its problems.

Domestic abuse, rape, murder – these things are extremely hard for some stranger to help prevent happening to another person, unless they know or see it is happening at the moment.

Though we might not have the power to stop some of the more dreadful things that occur in our society, that doesn’t mean that we can’t take time out of our day to do the little things that we can.

I know in multiple articles I have almost overused the idea of appreciating and caring about the little things, but if you are like me and would solve the world of its problems in a heart beat if you could, then the little things may be all that you have.

Anne Frank wrote in her diary (and later published book) once, “No one has ever become poor by giving.”

I guess technically if you give everything you own away then you would be poor financially, but if you have enough to put food on the table and support your family I would say you are doing all right.

But one thing that I have trouble doing myself is asking someone for help. I will exhaust every personal resource I have and rack my brain over and over again for a solution before I even think about going to someone else for help in a task or problem.

So why is it that we are so willing to help others but not accept help ourselves?

Sometimes you have to admit when you need help – be it from a friend, a parent, or even someone like a counselor in tough times.

Trying to be strong for yourself, as well as everyone else in your life, can be demanding and mentally as well as physically exhausting. I realize that I have not fully experienced what that can be like yet because I have no children.

Sometimes I look back and think about all that my parents have given me and realize I have much more to give and someday will have someone completely dependent on me and my spouse for a period of time.

But besides the fact that I feel as though I have yet to fully realize the extent that one person can help another, I think helping a person doesn’t always just enable them, but also inspires a person to become better.

When someone helps me it gives me a drive to do better next time and push myself to be able to help myself or not put myself in the same situation next time.

Accepting help when it is needed and learning from your struggles or mistakes shouldn’t be demeaning but rather something that makes you smarter and stronger.

My motto is to help anyone you reasonably can, and know that you made their day either a little brighter or easier in a rough situation.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said, “The purpose of life is not to be happy. It is to be useful, to be honorable, to be compassionate, to have it make some difference that you have lived and lived well.”

We were never promised a happy life full of no pain or struggles. So when we do all that we can to help everyone get through those bad points in life it makes the human race better as a whole.

Hannah Van Ree can be contacted at [email protected].