Asking others to listen can be fruitful for all

By Mia Pohlman

The other day I was struggling with my emotions and needed to talk. I called my friend because I knew she would understand. Once I'd finished talking, she said that it meant a lot that I'd asked her to listen to me, because she feels like she always asks me to listen to her when she's experiencing a problem. This helped me realize that I don't ask for help easily -- which I think is OK -- but that it's also nice to unburden myself to others sometimes, and that needing help is part of being human. It feels like an exhale, and we all know we need to exhale.

My friend's comment also has me thinking about how asking for help can be a gift to others -- a gift of placing merit in their life experience, the way they know God, and how they perceive the world. It is a gift of showing them that we don't have all the answers and that we trust them to receive our vulnerability. Since loving is our commandment and how we find fulfillment, it can be a gift to others to ask them to love us and to give them the chance to love us through their help. It means a lot to me when people ask me for my thoughts on something, or even ask me "just" to listen to them, and I want to extend this gift to others, too.

My friend also told me that experiencing emotion is humbling because it, too, reminds us that we are human, reminds us that we change and are not in control. We are human and not God, and that means that we get to experience life through emotion and change.

In section X.17 of Confessions, St. Augustine writes about the power of the memory to hold emotion, and yet how we must go beyond the memory to find God. In this, he asks, "What, then, am I, God? What is my nature? A life that is ever varying, full of change and of immense power."

His earnestness and seeking resonate with me in this passage, as well as the way he goes to the source of truth and creation to ask for help in understanding the power of his humanity, emotion and changeability. He realizes his memory contains images, knowledge and emotion, and asks for help in understanding these things. And he receives this help that he asks for -- the result is a rational step-by-step explanation of how our memory can be a tool to find God and therefore to find happiness. The answer Augustine receives as a result of asking becomes a gift to others, too, as he records it in his book.

Our God and others who reflect God are eager to help us, eager to love us, eager to share life. Jesus promises in John 15:7 (NAB) that if we remain in him, we can ask for whatever we want and it will be done for us. Our God wants us to bear fruit; asking for help leads us to deeper understanding and communion, and helps the community bear fruit that remains.