I Need You

I don't like to depend on other people, and this is deeply programmed within me.

I want to be the one who gives, who has the capacity to help others and has the willingness and means to be generous. This should not be surprising because this is taught in both American and Indian culture. We're not supposed to be the ones who need something, we're supposed to be the ones who give back. We're shamed if we need to leech off the efforts of others and are lauded if we're the ones who invest in others.

Part of this comes from a place of virtue - the community gets better when we all give more than our fair share. But I am grappling with the reality that part of this is also a myth.

I cannot be the strong generous man who gives all the time. And at this point in my life, I am struggling. Every aspect of my life is hard, and I don't have the capacity to help others. Rather, I am the one who needs, and it has been emasculating.

The myth is that the world is separated into the needy and the generous as if it's static. That the haves always have and the have nots always need. No person can give all the time, our lives ebb and flow. No one person can always ebb or always flow. At this point in my life, I am taking a lot and giving little. I have felt shameful about it for a long time, honestly. The calls I wasn't returning, the deadlines I was killing myself to hit and still missing. The progress I wasn't making in the places I volunteer, and the backyard parties I wasn't planning.

My whole life I have been the guy that is always there, the one who could always figure it out. The one everyone could lean on.

And now, I'm not, and the reality that I'm not a super person has been hard to swallow. But perhaps this is the most important life lesson I could possibly have. That I am not a super man, and I never was - that I am simply a man. Simply a simple man. Who can give but who also must need. Someone who can ask to lend a hand, but also ask for a hand.

It has been the hardest and most humbling thing to be able to learn to say to my friends, my parents, to my family, my colleagues, my neighbors and to God: I need you - please, I need you.

It was so hard to ask my mom to come help take care of my kids while Robyn was out of town, or my mother-in-law when Griffin was in the hospital. Or when we had to ask a group of friends if someone could take Robert to soccer practice. And yet we did. And others accepted our call for aid, without levying an ounce of flesh from us.

I am learning this now at 39, because I never learned it in childhood: I am just a man, nothing deficient or super, just a man. And for a man to survive in this world he must give and also must take, that sometimes we are haves and sometimes we are have nots. Sometimes we can ask - do you need a hand, but to be human is to know that sometimes all we can say is I need you.