Rabbi Haim once ascended to the firmaments to see the difference between the worlds. He first visited Gehenna (Hell).
He saw a vast hall with long tables covered in the most magnificent foods. But the people sitting there were skeletal and wailing in agony. As the Rabbi looked closer, he saw that every person had wooden slats splinted to their arms, stretching from their shoulders to their wrists. Their arms were perfectly straight and stiff; they could pick up a spoon, but they could not bend their elbows to bring the food to their own mouths. They sat in front of a feast, starving in bitterness.
The Rabbi then visited Gan Eden (Heaven). To his surprise, he saw the exact same hall, the same tables, and the same magnificent food. Even more shocking, the people there also had wooden slats splinted to their arms, keeping them from bending their elbows.
But here, the hall was filled with laughter and song. The people were well-fed and glowing. As the Rabbi watched, he saw a man fill his spoon and reach across the table, placing the food into the mouth of the man sitting opposite him. That man, in turn, filled his spoon and fed his friend.
The Rabbi returned to Hell and whispered to one of the starving men, "You do not have to starve! Reach across and feed your neighbor, and he will feed you."
The man in Hell looked at him with spite and replied, "What? You expect me to feed that fool across from me? I would rather starve than give him the pleasure of a full belly!"
Long time ago I did my confirmation (ex-protestant), but I seem to recall that wood is used a lot because it's a symbolism to man's mortality and frailty. Then after/with the crucifixion it also became a symbol of sacrifice and redemption in connection to mortality and frailty. But someone who remembers their studies better might offer a better explanation to why it's so popular.
Trees are big in the Torah and Bible generally. The Bible Project did a whole series on trees in the Bible. You've got the Tree of Life, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the cross, the tree in the book of Jonah, the fig tree, the parable of the vine and the branches, etc..
It all makes sense for a religion steeped in a desert culture. Trees are (relatively) rare, and what they offer is incredibly important and life giving.
In Norse mythology the first man Ask was carved out of a piece of ash tree and the first woman Embla out of a piece of elm. Ash is a good choice for tool handles and elm for constructing homes.
Humor aside, to appreciate these recurring themes, if you will, requires knowledge of, e.g., typology. Here, the cross with Christ nailed to it is transfigured into the new Tree of Life. Other important typologies are Christ as the new Adam, Mary as the new Eve, and Mary through her womb as the new Ark of the New Covenant. Noah's ark and the Ark of the Covenant are not called arks coincidentally, either. And the Church is often called the Barque of Peter.
This is somewhat a variant of the cooperate situation in the prisoners dilemma.
I find it interesting to dress it up in religion, because the optimal situation is to defect, and if everyone knows the game, you get a worse outcome. Religion can cause people to be selfless and you get a better outcome for most people.
I've always thought to teach people religion, but defect yourself. In a modern secular world, teach everyone ascetic stoicism. Myself, follow some sort of Machiavellian/Nietzsche/hedonism.
The optimal decision in the Prisoner's Dilemma is to defect, but in the iterated version, where multiple Dilemmas occur and people remember previous results, Tit-For-Tat is optimal. The real world is even less reminiscent of the Dilemma, so it's not at all clear that the Dilemma's conclusion applies.
(Tit-For-Tat: Prefer cooperating, but if the other person defected on the previous turn, defect on the current turn.)
> The optimal decision in the Prisoner's Dilemma is to defect, but in the iterated version, where multiple Dilemmas occur and people remember previous results, Tit-For-Tat is optimal.
That’s not true. There is no optimal strategy in iterated Prisoner's Dilemma in the sense that defection is optimal in the single-round version; Tit-for-Tat performs well in certain conditions in iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, and less well in others (dependent particularly on the strategies played on the other side); in single-round, defection always produces a better outcome than defection independently of the choice made against it.
Perhaps I am wrong about Tit-for-Tat. It's been a while since I checked my source. In any case, my point (not to say that you deny it) is not to take any result in an idealized game too literally, and that consistent defection is bad.
I found it very hard to apply the golden rule as someone who was abused as a child. I don't care how I'm treated, so I can treat you in any way, however cruel.
By accident I discovered that if instead of imagining how you would feel if I did this bad thing to you, I imagined how the one person I loved would feel. Suddenly I had a working version of empathy, which I use to this day. I don't treat others as I would want to be treated - I treat them as I would want them to treat my loved one.
I do not know your circumstances, but see what you think of this:
I have a nascent theory about human feelings, which goes that the basic feelings we experience are usually perceived through extensive filtering by our personal, social, cultural, etc., beliefs/experiences. The convincing conscious perception of a feeling may be misinterpreted to an extent. Anger is an emotion that can often become misdirected. Supposedly, sexual arousal can be interpreted in translation from fear[0].
Someone who is suicidal may consider suicide seriously, but feel an urge to live in the process of suicide. Circumstance may make certain feelings clear, but by examining removed from circumstance, the person had the capacity for both feelings. There is some "essence" to the person that those feelings, brought on by circumstance, only scratch the surface of. Observing a narrow range of circumstances and assuming it is the essence is a mistake.
I think that more or less every person, in their essence, understands human decency. It may be that some people truly don't have the capacity to appreciate it (thought: aliens?), but usually, I think the real culprit is learned behavior through various factors, and innate cognitive biases. I don't mean to say that it is easy to change people, because the opposite is generally true, but I think it is worth thinking about.
That said, if there was someone who truly needed to, say, murder the way we need to eat, I say that they would do no wrong by murdering, but that we would do no wrong by apprehending them. I wish to get to people at their essences, not their accidents.
100%, our emotions have two components: the initial feeling and the thought-derived reaction. It's like when a toddler falls over and looks back at the mother to decide whether or not it was hurt badly enough that it needs to cry.
the Stoics taught this over 2000 years ago. it is not what happens but how we categorise it that matters.
Felt bad hearing about your childhood but am really glad you found a way to get past it to start trusting people again. It must have been a difficult process for you but I am glad you shared your worldview with us - I find it more "selfless" than the golden rule.
I had the almost the same thought. It reminds me of every time I hear Americans saying that they don't want their tax dollars going to the "wrong people" (even if the majority of support is going to people that actually needs it).
Meta: down votes here prove no such thing. If you are downvoted it's because you read the article that had nothing to do with politics, the comment on a vision of heaven and hell that had nothing to do with politics, and then you made it about something that is very politicized in the US.
Both the article and comment you commented on eschewed a trite political message and tried to say something real and human.
It’s not as simple as that and you know it. There are upsides and downsides to both systems.
Personally, I’d be fine with universal healthcare on the state level, but not the federal. The fact that I have thoughts like that shows it’s not as simple as “durr everyone deserves healthcare.” Of course they do, but a universal healthcare system implemented poorly means that everyone gets really bad healthcare.
But the parent wasn't doing that. He was just taking the opportunity to dunk on his outgroup, by insinuating that people who are opposed to universal healthcare are selfish people who would rather hurt themselves than help others (which you will see is patently untrue if you actually get to know those people, but I digress).
If the parent had instead chosen to give a thoughtful response focusing more on a positive message (say, exploring how we should do more to help others and how universal healthcare can be a facet of that), that would've been fine. But yet another post of "my outgroup is evil" doesn't teach us anything or lead to good discussion.
"please convince me otherwise, but keep in mind I have a very strongly held opinion that I consider to be an unshakeable fact, and by the way I'm asking you for evidence while providing none of my own. But it's a fact."
Just ask your favorite AI "How U.S. compares to others countries in healthcare metrics?" and you'll probably get a detailed list of how U.S. healthcare is more expensive than many other countries while ranking quite low in outcomes: life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, chronic disease, ... (and also having part of the population out of the insurance network)
You are entitled to have whatever opinion you want on the matter, but that doesn't change the facts.
Sometimes people believe that if the US isn’t doing it already, there isn’t a better way, because somehow the best nation on the planet would be doing it already, it’s blind patriotism, rather than accept their might be better solutions. It why we care more about the flag or eagle than the US Constitution.
When someone's spouse has died, a very helpful thing to do is to cook and package and deliver meals that the surviving spouse can simply place in the fridge and warm up as needed. When you are grieving, to actually prepare a meal is a terribly, terribly difficult thing to do.
A really bad platitude can be "let me know if I can help, somehow!" and then leaving it at that.
Well, your friend/acquaintance may not know how you can best help. Yes, if it's a widower who lost a home-maker wife, he may need help fixing meals or cleaning house or doing laundry. Vice versa for a woman who's lost her husband.
But if you don't fill them in on how you can help and the things you are good at doing they will not know how or when to ask you. And then you will not end up helping.
Be concrete and specific when you offer help. You could make a list of three things to do. Then present your list as a menu of choices. Or "D", something different.
Be concrete about your boundaries and schedules. Don't let them get carried away with using your services. Tell them you can give them a ride once a week to essential errands, for example. It is sometimes most helpful if there are multiple people pitching in.
Really, long-term, if I were in need, I'd want to go to a professional agency for most things. A professional meal-prep service, housekeeping agency, home care agency that sends licensed and bonded pros. My volunteering friends and neighbors are well-intentioned, but this can be fraught with difficulty if they are not good, or not-so-well-intentioned after all.
Many people will swoop in to take advantage of people who are perceived to be vulnerable, grieving, and willing to accept help. That's why some of us are skeptical.
The best thing I've found is to ask what they need help with, then do that thing for them. One time when we just brought food (by traditional and assumption, without thinking too hard about it), it ended up being more frustrating for the people receiving it then intended.
The nice thing about that is that you don't have to ask how you can help, you can just help. I knew a guy who would go to a grieving household and clean their shoes.
I think you'd have to be awfully closely associated with that household for that to work. As a widower I have to say that I really would not have wanted an outsider suddenly appearing and deciding what I needed help with when my wife died.
Perhaps it would work if there were very clear signs that the bereaved were unable to cope.
You even have to be careful with bringing meals. When we lost a family member and all kinds of food started showing up, it was very sweet of people. But it became just one more hassle to deal with at a time when we already had too much to deal with.
But "help" has to be what will actually help, otherwise it's not actually help. That is, help has to be what the receiver considers help, not what the giver considers help.
"Let me help you in the way I want to help, not in the way you actually need" is either short-sightedness or selfishness. But it's not actually helpful.
It's true. And technically many of them can afford takeout when it's too hard. But there's something healing about someone, whether family or friends, actually doing the act of helping in this way. It's a sort of transfer of love from one heart into another, which heals the broken one. The more of a sacrifice it costs the one giving help, the more healing efficacy it seems to have, even if the amount is unknown to the person receiving help. It's almost magical.
I might be a bit weird about this but… the chances of somebody making something that I want to eat is pretty small. I don’t like eating food from a non-commercial kitchen that I haven’t seen.
If you want to feed me, give me a DoorDash or Uber gift card.
That is unusual. I’ve encountered a couple people like this. They also refuse get-togethers in people’s homes and potlucks. One said he would be willing to come to a potluck if he could inspect everyone’s kitchens first; he wasn’t joking! It’s a blend of germaphobia and social distrust, I suppose.
That said, if someone was grieving and they couldn’t handle more than receiving delivered takeout, I’d happily send it, just as I’d accommodate another dietary preference when preparing a real meal.
I think it comes from some bad experiences at church potlucks and school bake sales when I was a kid. Combine that with watching people cook who taste with the stirring spoon and then stick it back in the pot and I’d rather not eat your homemade goods.
I also had some bad experiences eating at my grandmothers (she was a terrible cook). I think her experiences in the Great Depression meant no food would go to waste. I ate so many years-past expiration foods when I was a kid. Have you ever had really intense food poisoning? Ugh…
I don't have my own kids, but my experience with people with kids is that they're often desperate for social interaction, they feel limited in their ability to go out of the house, and they really don't want the extra work from having guests over.
So I try to act accordingly — help cook and tidy up the kitchen afterwards, help bathe the kids and/or put them to bed where appropriate, or just sit on the couch fiddling with my mobile when not interfering is the best course of action. Just slot into their routine and provide an extra pair of hands. For people you're comfortable with, socialising happens around these things just fine.
> I don't have my own kids, but my experience with people with kids is that they're often desperate for social interaction, they feel limited in their ability to go out of the house, and they really don't want the extra work from having guests over.
It depends on the age of the kids and situation, but visiting people can be helpful if done carefully.
From reading (likely too much) internet commentary about having babies I assumed I'd be completely exhausted and worn out from constantly giving the baby attention for the first few months. Then I discovered that newborns sleep literally 3/4 of the day.
The hard part is the disrupted sleep schedule when their newborn stomachs are small and they need to eat every few hours. It can be really hard to adjust for people who have lived their lives with 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep all the time.
Funnily enough, having lived with middle of the night insomnia and disrupted sleep my life I wasn't really bothered by the newborn feeding schedule (via pumped milk in bottles, my wife did the real work during the day).
The value of socializing for us, which I didn't expect at all, was to fill the boredom. We were lucky enough to both be able to take a lot of time off work at the same time, which combined with the newborn sleeping 2/3 to 3/4 of the day left us feeling unplugged from the world.
Everyone is different, though. I've had friends who just didn't want to see anyone or have other people in their house for the first few months, so we respected that. I know some people who got tired of endless visitors trying to help, while others lamented not having enough help. It can be tough to feel it out so try to be especially intune with subtle social signals and look for hints to take.
Ask before. Because random food packages would definitely not helped me.
The other people thinking they know better then ypu and that you having kids mean you dont deserve agency anymore was the worst thing about having baby.
it very much depends on how prepared the parents are. if you or your partner grew up with a lot of siblings you have plenty of examples from your own childhood to draw on that make things easier.
i didn't have that, so i struggled, especially in the beginning, not because it felt hard, but simply because i didn't know what to do. the mechanics are easy to learn, feeding, changing, sleep, etc, but beyond that i simply had no examples to draw on. but i was able to compensate that with continuously being aware that this is what i wanted. i chose this adventure, and i was not going to despair over making that choice, nor would i regret it.
but we were also lucky, and our kids were not fussy and slept well. they got plenty of breastfeeding because nobody told my wife when or how to stop and she didn't complain, so she stopped when the kids were ready on their own.
The mother and child’s health are likely a factor in this, surely? Depending on how the delivery went, there may be a period of recovery. Combined with disrupted sleep and newborn feeding, the combination can be rough.
Good point, they were all super easy births. They had high bilirubin levels, but I looked up that I could put blue light on them, and it cures it. So I brought a LED light strip and placed my kid next to a window.
We also had sleep shifts. Giving each of us 3 hours of solid sleep was like 2 REM cycles. Only needed to do ~2 per night and we were mostly normal.
> They sleep most the day, giving you an opportunity to sleep and cook.
I got some douchebag babies, because they were breastfeeding every 2-3 hours for a long time. Probably every 2 hours for the first few months, so that doesn’t allow for quality sleep cycles. It also takes a while to put them to sleep, so the total period of free time could be as little as 15 to 30 minutes.
The first one needed time to learn how to breastfeed (and the mom to learn also).
And also, physical recovery from tears in the flesh and other complications such as hemorrhoids and hormone fluctuations.
Yes, very common in Turkish culture. My dad passed away a month ago. Everyone who came over to offer condolences brought pastries, cakes, various home-made foods. And roasted chestnuts, which are sold by street vendors in Turkey in the winter.
I thought about why that is, and came to the same conclusion as you: when you are grieving you just need to be able to go through the motions, and not stressing about what foods to make is really helpful.
The end of this article leaves me hanging. Did she manage to find the previously employed insurance lady so that she could thank her, or not? I need closure!
Probably the most precious gift my wife—a widow herself, as well as having endured quite a bit else over the past 20 years—has given me was, she let me help. She let me in when she hadn't much of a reason to trust anyone.
Of course, if it hadn't been for her dog propeller-tailing when I walked in the door and wondering where I was when I left, I probably wouldn't have gotten the chance. So I owe him my gratitude as well.
Rabbi Haim once ascended to the firmaments to see the difference between the worlds. He first visited Gehenna (Hell).
He saw a vast hall with long tables covered in the most magnificent foods. But the people sitting there were skeletal and wailing in agony. As the Rabbi looked closer, he saw that every person had wooden slats splinted to their arms, stretching from their shoulders to their wrists. Their arms were perfectly straight and stiff; they could pick up a spoon, but they could not bend their elbows to bring the food to their own mouths. They sat in front of a feast, starving in bitterness.
The Rabbi then visited Gan Eden (Heaven). To his surprise, he saw the exact same hall, the same tables, and the same magnificent food. Even more shocking, the people there also had wooden slats splinted to their arms, keeping them from bending their elbows. But here, the hall was filled with laughter and song. The people were well-fed and glowing. As the Rabbi watched, he saw a man fill his spoon and reach across the table, placing the food into the mouth of the man sitting opposite him. That man, in turn, filled his spoon and fed his friend.
The Rabbi returned to Hell and whispered to one of the starving men, "You do not have to starve! Reach across and feed your neighbor, and he will feed you." The man in Hell looked at him with spite and replied, "What? You expect me to feed that fool across from me? I would rather starve than give him the pleasure of a full belly!"
The Judeo–Christian God really has a thing for attaching people to wood.
Long time ago I did my confirmation (ex-protestant), but I seem to recall that wood is used a lot because it's a symbolism to man's mortality and frailty. Then after/with the crucifixion it also became a symbol of sacrifice and redemption in connection to mortality and frailty. But someone who remembers their studies better might offer a better explanation to why it's so popular.
Trees are big in the Torah and Bible generally. The Bible Project did a whole series on trees in the Bible. You've got the Tree of Life, the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, the cross, the tree in the book of Jonah, the fig tree, the parable of the vine and the branches, etc..
It all makes sense for a religion steeped in a desert culture. Trees are (relatively) rare, and what they offer is incredibly important and life giving.
In Norse mythology the first man Ask was carved out of a piece of ash tree and the first woman Embla out of a piece of elm. Ash is a good choice for tool handles and elm for constructing homes.
Trees are big in all sorts of mythologies. Primates like trees.
Because modern building materials like concrete weren't as popular?
The Romans had concrete and the Greeks had something similar but less advanced
Humor aside, to appreciate these recurring themes, if you will, requires knowledge of, e.g., typology. Here, the cross with Christ nailed to it is transfigured into the new Tree of Life. Other important typologies are Christ as the new Adam, Mary as the new Eve, and Mary through her womb as the new Ark of the New Covenant. Noah's ark and the Ark of the Covenant are not called arks coincidentally, either. And the Church is often called the Barque of Peter.
[dead]
Hell is only hell because of the people in it. I like the idea of being among likespirited people in the afterlife.
This is somewhat a variant of the cooperate situation in the prisoners dilemma.
I find it interesting to dress it up in religion, because the optimal situation is to defect, and if everyone knows the game, you get a worse outcome. Religion can cause people to be selfless and you get a better outcome for most people.
I've always thought to teach people religion, but defect yourself. In a modern secular world, teach everyone ascetic stoicism. Myself, follow some sort of Machiavellian/Nietzsche/hedonism.
The optimal decision in the Prisoner's Dilemma is to defect, but in the iterated version, where multiple Dilemmas occur and people remember previous results, Tit-For-Tat is optimal. The real world is even less reminiscent of the Dilemma, so it's not at all clear that the Dilemma's conclusion applies.
(Tit-For-Tat: Prefer cooperating, but if the other person defected on the previous turn, defect on the current turn.)
> The optimal decision in the Prisoner's Dilemma is to defect, but in the iterated version, where multiple Dilemmas occur and people remember previous results, Tit-For-Tat is optimal.
That’s not true. There is no optimal strategy in iterated Prisoner's Dilemma in the sense that defection is optimal in the single-round version; Tit-for-Tat performs well in certain conditions in iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, and less well in others (dependent particularly on the strategies played on the other side); in single-round, defection always produces a better outcome than defection independently of the choice made against it.
Perhaps I am wrong about Tit-for-Tat. It's been a while since I checked my source. In any case, my point (not to say that you deny it) is not to take any result in an idealized game too literally, and that consistent defection is bad.
It's not zero sum though? You lose nothing by feeding your neighbor. In the real most things aren't quite zero sum either.
Ignoring myth and belief differences
The purpose of the article and the story above was simple - you and I are the same ultimately
The golden rule is just that- when we recognize ourselves in others we act to minimize pain in others as we would to ourselves
Imagine the world as a one person play with each role played by the same person but in different costumes: you
I found it very hard to apply the golden rule as someone who was abused as a child. I don't care how I'm treated, so I can treat you in any way, however cruel.
By accident I discovered that if instead of imagining how you would feel if I did this bad thing to you, I imagined how the one person I loved would feel. Suddenly I had a working version of empathy, which I use to this day. I don't treat others as I would want to be treated - I treat them as I would want them to treat my loved one.
I do not know your circumstances, but see what you think of this:
I have a nascent theory about human feelings, which goes that the basic feelings we experience are usually perceived through extensive filtering by our personal, social, cultural, etc., beliefs/experiences. The convincing conscious perception of a feeling may be misinterpreted to an extent. Anger is an emotion that can often become misdirected. Supposedly, sexual arousal can be interpreted in translation from fear[0].
Someone who is suicidal may consider suicide seriously, but feel an urge to live in the process of suicide. Circumstance may make certain feelings clear, but by examining removed from circumstance, the person had the capacity for both feelings. There is some "essence" to the person that those feelings, brought on by circumstance, only scratch the surface of. Observing a narrow range of circumstances and assuming it is the essence is a mistake.
I think that more or less every person, in their essence, understands human decency. It may be that some people truly don't have the capacity to appreciate it (thought: aliens?), but usually, I think the real culprit is learned behavior through various factors, and innate cognitive biases. I don't mean to say that it is easy to change people, because the opposite is generally true, but I think it is worth thinking about.
That said, if there was someone who truly needed to, say, murder the way we need to eat, I say that they would do no wrong by murdering, but that we would do no wrong by apprehending them. I wish to get to people at their essences, not their accidents.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misattribution_of_arousal
100%, our emotions have two components: the initial feeling and the thought-derived reaction. It's like when a toddler falls over and looks back at the mother to decide whether or not it was hurt badly enough that it needs to cry.
the Stoics taught this over 2000 years ago. it is not what happens but how we categorise it that matters.
Felt bad hearing about your childhood but am really glad you found a way to get past it to start trusting people again. It must have been a difficult process for you but I am glad you shared your worldview with us - I find it more "selfless" than the golden rule.
So you're a liar and degenerate psychopath.
thank you for sharing
I can’t help thinking this applies to universal healthcare in the US.
It would be cheaper and get better outcomes, but is still opposed because “working together is socialism”
Meta: downvotes to prove my point.
I had the almost the same thought. It reminds me of every time I hear Americans saying that they don't want their tax dollars going to the "wrong people" (even if the majority of support is going to people that actually needs it).
Meta: down votes here prove no such thing. If you are downvoted it's because you read the article that had nothing to do with politics, the comment on a vision of heaven and hell that had nothing to do with politics, and then you made it about something that is very politicized in the US.
Both the article and comment you commented on eschewed a trite political message and tried to say something real and human.
The fact you think a basic human right is politics shows how much of a problem it is.
Developed countries don’t do that.
It’s not as simple as that and you know it. There are upsides and downsides to both systems.
Personally, I’d be fine with universal healthcare on the state level, but not the federal. The fact that I have thoughts like that shows it’s not as simple as “durr everyone deserves healthcare.” Of course they do, but a universal healthcare system implemented poorly means that everyone gets really bad healthcare.
Universal healthcare is real and human. If we can't use an article to inform how we think about current problems, what's the point of it?
But the parent wasn't doing that. He was just taking the opportunity to dunk on his outgroup, by insinuating that people who are opposed to universal healthcare are selfish people who would rather hurt themselves than help others (which you will see is patently untrue if you actually get to know those people, but I digress).
If the parent had instead chosen to give a thoughtful response focusing more on a positive message (say, exploring how we should do more to help others and how universal healthcare can be a facet of that), that would've been fine. But yet another post of "my outgroup is evil" doesn't teach us anything or lead to good discussion.
That's not a very charitable interpretation of his comments.
> people who are opposed to universal healthcare are selfish people who would rather hurt themselves than help others
Indeed that is the only explanation I have ever figured out.
> insinuating that people who are opposed to universal healthcare are selfish people who would rather hurt themselves than help others
Please educate me.
What possible reason is there to oppose universal healthcare?
Please keep in mind that factually it’s cheaper and results in better outcomes in every developed country in the world.
"please convince me otherwise, but keep in mind I have a very strongly held opinion that I consider to be an unshakeable fact, and by the way I'm asking you for evidence while providing none of my own. But it's a fact."
Just ask your favorite AI "How U.S. compares to others countries in healthcare metrics?" and you'll probably get a detailed list of how U.S. healthcare is more expensive than many other countries while ranking quite low in outcomes: life expectancy, maternal and infant mortality, chronic disease, ... (and also having part of the population out of the insurance network)
You are entitled to have whatever opinion you want on the matter, but that doesn't change the facts.
Sometimes people believe that if the US isn’t doing it already, there isn’t a better way, because somehow the best nation on the planet would be doing it already, it’s blind patriotism, rather than accept their might be better solutions. It why we care more about the flag or eagle than the US Constitution.
When someone's spouse has died, a very helpful thing to do is to cook and package and deliver meals that the surviving spouse can simply place in the fridge and warm up as needed. When you are grieving, to actually prepare a meal is a terribly, terribly difficult thing to do.
A really bad platitude can be "let me know if I can help, somehow!" and then leaving it at that.
Well, your friend/acquaintance may not know how you can best help. Yes, if it's a widower who lost a home-maker wife, he may need help fixing meals or cleaning house or doing laundry. Vice versa for a woman who's lost her husband.
But if you don't fill them in on how you can help and the things you are good at doing they will not know how or when to ask you. And then you will not end up helping.
Be concrete and specific when you offer help. You could make a list of three things to do. Then present your list as a menu of choices. Or "D", something different.
Be concrete about your boundaries and schedules. Don't let them get carried away with using your services. Tell them you can give them a ride once a week to essential errands, for example. It is sometimes most helpful if there are multiple people pitching in.
Really, long-term, if I were in need, I'd want to go to a professional agency for most things. A professional meal-prep service, housekeeping agency, home care agency that sends licensed and bonded pros. My volunteering friends and neighbors are well-intentioned, but this can be fraught with difficulty if they are not good, or not-so-well-intentioned after all.
Many people will swoop in to take advantage of people who are perceived to be vulnerable, grieving, and willing to accept help. That's why some of us are skeptical.
The best thing I've found is to ask what they need help with, then do that thing for them. One time when we just brought food (by traditional and assumption, without thinking too hard about it), it ended up being more frustrating for the people receiving it then intended.
The nice thing about that is that you don't have to ask how you can help, you can just help. I knew a guy who would go to a grieving household and clean their shoes.
I think you'd have to be awfully closely associated with that household for that to work. As a widower I have to say that I really would not have wanted an outsider suddenly appearing and deciding what I needed help with when my wife died.
Perhaps it would work if there were very clear signs that the bereaved were unable to cope.
You even have to be careful with bringing meals. When we lost a family member and all kinds of food started showing up, it was very sweet of people. But it became just one more hassle to deal with at a time when we already had too much to deal with.
I feel as though you’ve skipped over the entire article, here you complain about people helping for an article titled “Let people help!”
But "help" has to be what will actually help, otherwise it's not actually help. That is, help has to be what the receiver considers help, not what the giver considers help.
"Let me help you in the way I want to help, not in the way you actually need" is either short-sightedness or selfishness. But it's not actually helpful.
Friends in need are the friends indeed
But the friends who think of what we need
They hardly talk at all, they just do it
-Chris Smither
It's true. And technically many of them can afford takeout when it's too hard. But there's something healing about someone, whether family or friends, actually doing the act of helping in this way. It's a sort of transfer of love from one heart into another, which heals the broken one. The more of a sacrifice it costs the one giving help, the more healing efficacy it seems to have, even if the amount is unknown to the person receiving help. It's almost magical.
Thank you for saying this. Some other comments here seem otherworldly.
I might be a bit weird about this but… the chances of somebody making something that I want to eat is pretty small. I don’t like eating food from a non-commercial kitchen that I haven’t seen.
If you want to feed me, give me a DoorDash or Uber gift card.
Yes, that is weird. It's rather normal for the average person to not be so restrictive.
That is unusual. I’ve encountered a couple people like this. They also refuse get-togethers in people’s homes and potlucks. One said he would be willing to come to a potluck if he could inspect everyone’s kitchens first; he wasn’t joking! It’s a blend of germaphobia and social distrust, I suppose.
That said, if someone was grieving and they couldn’t handle more than receiving delivered takeout, I’d happily send it, just as I’d accommodate another dietary preference when preparing a real meal.
I think it comes from some bad experiences at church potlucks and school bake sales when I was a kid. Combine that with watching people cook who taste with the stirring spoon and then stick it back in the pot and I’d rather not eat your homemade goods.
I also had some bad experiences eating at my grandmothers (she was a terrible cook). I think her experiences in the Great Depression meant no food would go to waste. I ate so many years-past expiration foods when I was a kid. Have you ever had really intense food poisoning? Ugh…
The person needs to never see a commercial kitchen from the inside, lest they starve
One of my neighbors has seen the inside of commercial kitchens, they simply never eat out. Everything is home cooked.
From the article: “One of the neighbors actually cooked for me for four years — dinners — and her husband delivered the dinners to me."
I winced at that. 4 years.
Same advise exactly for a newborn. It was incredibly helpful for us, and now we love doing it for others.
I find it fitting the approach for new life and death can be the same.
I don't have my own kids, but my experience with people with kids is that they're often desperate for social interaction, they feel limited in their ability to go out of the house, and they really don't want the extra work from having guests over.
So I try to act accordingly — help cook and tidy up the kitchen afterwards, help bathe the kids and/or put them to bed where appropriate, or just sit on the couch fiddling with my mobile when not interfering is the best course of action. Just slot into their routine and provide an extra pair of hands. For people you're comfortable with, socialising happens around these things just fine.
> I don't have my own kids, but my experience with people with kids is that they're often desperate for social interaction, they feel limited in their ability to go out of the house, and they really don't want the extra work from having guests over.
It depends on the age of the kids and situation, but visiting people can be helpful if done carefully.
From reading (likely too much) internet commentary about having babies I assumed I'd be completely exhausted and worn out from constantly giving the baby attention for the first few months. Then I discovered that newborns sleep literally 3/4 of the day.
The hard part is the disrupted sleep schedule when their newborn stomachs are small and they need to eat every few hours. It can be really hard to adjust for people who have lived their lives with 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep all the time.
Funnily enough, having lived with middle of the night insomnia and disrupted sleep my life I wasn't really bothered by the newborn feeding schedule (via pumped milk in bottles, my wife did the real work during the day).
The value of socializing for us, which I didn't expect at all, was to fill the boredom. We were lucky enough to both be able to take a lot of time off work at the same time, which combined with the newborn sleeping 2/3 to 3/4 of the day left us feeling unplugged from the world.
Everyone is different, though. I've had friends who just didn't want to see anyone or have other people in their house for the first few months, so we respected that. I know some people who got tired of endless visitors trying to help, while others lamented not having enough help. It can be tough to feel it out so try to be especially intune with subtle social signals and look for hints to take.
Ask before. Because random food packages would definitely not helped me.
The other people thinking they know better then ypu and that you having kids mean you dont deserve agency anymore was the worst thing about having baby.
Maybe because I'm on kid #6, but what is the hard part again? They sleep most the day, giving you an opportunity to sleep and cook.
I remember kid #1, we didn't remember to burp and he was fussy, but after that, its been fine.
it very much depends on how prepared the parents are. if you or your partner grew up with a lot of siblings you have plenty of examples from your own childhood to draw on that make things easier.
i didn't have that, so i struggled, especially in the beginning, not because it felt hard, but simply because i didn't know what to do. the mechanics are easy to learn, feeding, changing, sleep, etc, but beyond that i simply had no examples to draw on. but i was able to compensate that with continuously being aware that this is what i wanted. i chose this adventure, and i was not going to despair over making that choice, nor would i regret it.
but we were also lucky, and our kids were not fussy and slept well. they got plenty of breastfeeding because nobody told my wife when or how to stop and she didn't complain, so she stopped when the kids were ready on their own.
That’s an impressive run.
The mother and child’s health are likely a factor in this, surely? Depending on how the delivery went, there may be a period of recovery. Combined with disrupted sleep and newborn feeding, the combination can be rough.
Good point, they were all super easy births. They had high bilirubin levels, but I looked up that I could put blue light on them, and it cures it. So I brought a LED light strip and placed my kid next to a window.
We also had sleep shifts. Giving each of us 3 hours of solid sleep was like 2 REM cycles. Only needed to do ~2 per night and we were mostly normal.
If I remember right, a little jaundice gives them a nice looking skin colour and makes them drowsy.
100% not good medical advice.
We never got close to sorting the sleep routine. Well done.
> They sleep most the day, giving you an opportunity to sleep and cook.
I got some douchebag babies, because they were breastfeeding every 2-3 hours for a long time. Probably every 2 hours for the first few months, so that doesn’t allow for quality sleep cycles. It also takes a while to put them to sleep, so the total period of free time could be as little as 15 to 30 minutes.
The first one needed time to learn how to breastfeed (and the mom to learn also).
And also, physical recovery from tears in the flesh and other complications such as hemorrhoids and hormone fluctuations.
For 4 years tho?
That's a pretty heavy debt.
same here, i had to check the transcription was right, maybe she mixed up the words?
Let them help!
Yes, very common in Turkish culture. My dad passed away a month ago. Everyone who came over to offer condolences brought pastries, cakes, various home-made foods. And roasted chestnuts, which are sold by street vendors in Turkey in the winter.
I thought about why that is, and came to the same conclusion as you: when you are grieving you just need to be able to go through the motions, and not stressing about what foods to make is really helpful.
Text-based alt: https://text.npr.org/2026/01/20/nx-s1-5683170/let-them-the-s...
Thank for the alt text-only-mode link, it's nice.
0n some browsers, Reader mode (or Simplified Web View mode) can be used to view webpages or articles as simple text.
This may be need to be enabled in the Accessibility Settings of the browser.
e.g., Above poignant article can be viewed as Reader mode in Vivaldi browser, or Simplified Web View, on Android.
The end of this article leaves me hanging. Did she manage to find the previously employed insurance lady so that she could thank her, or not? I need closure!
Probably the most precious gift my wife—a widow herself, as well as having endured quite a bit else over the past 20 years—has given me was, she let me help. She let me in when she hadn't much of a reason to trust anyone.
Of course, if it hadn't been for her dog propeller-tailing when I walked in the door and wondering where I was when I left, I probably wouldn't have gotten the chance. So I owe him my gratitude as well.
Where do they find all those people who help people? Try to write article about someone who has nobody and nobody cares.. no story in that.
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