“Help," he said, "is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.
"So it is," he said, using an old homiletic transition, "that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don't know what part to give or maybe we don't like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we don not have the part that is needed. It is like the auto-supply shop over town where they always say, 'Sorry, we are just out of that part.'"
I told him, "You make it too tough. Help doesn't have to be anything that big."
He asked me, "Do you think your mother helps him my buttering his rolls?"
"She might," I told him. "In fact, I think she does."
"Do you think you help him?" he asked me.
"I try to," I said. "My trouble is I don't know him. In fact, one of my troubles is that I don't even know whether he needs help. I don't know, that's my trouble."
"That should have been my text," my father said. "We are willing to help, Lord, but what if anything is needed?”
―
Norman Maclean,
A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
