Flash Fiction Friday - Offering

I stumble and fall and you are there to lift me up, light as a feather, your strong arms cradling me like a child. No. I push you away and you cry and I cry and we both want something different. You want me to let you lift me. I want never to stumble and fall. You offer love. I wish I could accept.

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I have a hard time accepting help. I need it a lot, but even when I take it, I either hold it against the person who offered or I convince myself that it was me. At least, when I'm at my worst. At my best, it's something else.

I took one look at this picture, saw the title, and almost ignored the phrase because I couldn't do anything with it. But "Offering?" That I could work with.

I've been there. Both carrying and being carried. There's a line from Hamlet that a lot of people know; Polonius says, "Neither a borrower nor a lender be." He's giving advice to his son who's off to college, and the scene is supposed to illustrate Polonius' character, and also to be amusing (which it can be, in the right hands). Some people take the line out of context and choose to believe that Polonius is making some deep point, when in fact he's a comic character whose advice is supposed to sound idiotic. But I'd like to make a deep point based on his shallow line. Forgive me.

Being a borrower or a lender isn't about whether or not you owe people anything, or whether anyone owes you. There's no way to be totally isolated from the rest of the world; you'll always have debts and people will always owe you something. That's the nature of living: we are connected. What being a borrower or a lender means is that you count your debts. If you're a borrower, you worry about paying back your debts, and if you're a lender, you expect repayment. It's a balance sheet. That's no way to go through life. Be a giver and a receiver. Give freely and you'll receive just as freely. But if you happen to give more than you get, guess what: that's life. You're only miserable about it if you keep track. If you worry about the balance sheet of your life, you're going to wind up miserable and worried because there's no way you're ever going to come out even. You can't repay some debts.

I'm not advocating taking without giving back. But sometimes, all you can do is try to give as good as you get (which is another phrase I'm turning on its ear here). In fact, don't think about debts, think about gifts. Be grateful in receiving, and magnanimous in giving. If you stumble and fall, let someone help you up, and if you see someone stumble, help that person up in turn. Love and be loved. Not owing anyone anything is lonely, not admirable. Mutual gifts tied together societies throughout history, and they can tie together people now. Pride keeps us alone.

There was something about her hand on his shoulder, the way she turned her face from him, that just suggested the brief snippet I wrote to me. I tried to write another about something else, connected but distinct, but couldn't make it work out. Maybe I was just fixated on the first idea. Because I've been there.

Anyway, this long and rambling discourse concluded, I must entreat you to visit Flash Fiction Friday headquarters and see everyone else's stuff. I probably won't make it in again this week because I have barely enough time to write this, but they deserve your attention and mine. Maybe sometime I'll talk about justice, and how it's fine to be a giver without counting the cost but in the end some people take and take without giving back. I feel a bit like that recently, Flash Fiction Friday-wise. But there are only so many hours in the day.