Hello Children of the Corn...no wait...readers.
This was introduced by Mike K.
This is a huge qeustion I know...it is...but lets give you an example.
Let's say youre at a restaurant and as you're sitting there you hear two people to the right of you having an argument about Spongebob. Let's say one of them says, "NO! spongebob's best friend is not name patrick, his name is crabs" and then the other guy jumps in, "HELL NO! his best friend is name patrick not crabs!!"
now...becuase you have kids that watch it or even a 27 year old friend that has you watch it when you come visit him at his home while he eats cereal and sits in his boxers...you know that the answer is patrick.
is it your responsiblity to tell them, "hey gents! it's patrick!"
PSYCH!SENSE question: is it our responsibility to help others?
Now this was a simple example...but we may have discovered..as we hear problems from our friends...family...strangers or strippers...we sometimes want to offer our opinion because we have been reading this blog and may understand how to give words that could help.
Mike K. says that if we do we must be willing to "walk with them." In other words, if someone is going through a divorce...arguing about the size of Ron Jeremy's member or even the name of spongebob's best friend, we must be willing to stay with them, talk about the suggested and be with the person for a while as they work through it.
This makes sense if they are friends. If you have friends and they come to you...I feel that it then becomes your moral duty to help them if you can. If you cannot offer them so much help...it then becomes your responsibility to walk with them to where you can and tell them.
what about with stranger? I suppose it depends on the location...on the subject and what you know about it. If someone is talking about spongebob's friend and i'm feeling social..I may offer the answer...if two stranger are talking about divorce that one of them just went through..hmm...I may consider sitting quietly reading my Home and Garden magazine. But should I say anything? I believe so. Perhaps in moments of stress and anger, torment and pain we should all be so lucky as to have someone sit down with us and offer a friendly ear.
what do you do?
The way I've handled situations like this in the past are simple. If its a discussion that I don't really want to be part of but can be solved with a simple factual answer, then I will provide it, as you do with the Patrick thing. IE: "Is the philosoraptor awesome?" It doesn't take much of my day to simply say "Yes. Yes he is." It's not something that can really be debated or argued against. It simply is thus minimizing my need to interject and interrupt their conversation further.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I have a very specific code of things I allow myself to discuss with other people for the sake of getting along. If I am sitting there listening to someone discuss something more objective, like... whether or not there should be universal health care or if there is a god for the sheer reason that I have never once sat and heard any of these arguments end well. I never bring them up with friends so I never bring them up with strangers either.
^Clearly I meant subjective rather than objective on my 2nd paragraph.
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