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Pride and Shame

The struggles in seeking help

By Basil FreshPublished 4 years ago 3 min read
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Me vs my uncle

I was watching The office in the past few weeks and depression caught up to me. I’m sure going to put out a long writing about false hope in order to fulfil my two weeks per writing goal that I put for myself. You see... I’m writing constantly and it’s frustrating to delete all the hard work I did in that two weeks. And mostly, I’ll feel unsatisfied and just discard it into the draft pile. In with the weird stories.

I give up some of the finished product, due to it being too deep into the zone(which is too mystical to comprehend myself, but those I’ll try putting it on my instagram page) , or it dug too deep into me(those stories are so raw I’m afraid to share them to begin with, But I do wish to be fully transparent as a person. So I’m working on being shameless and owning up to my past) , or some are just straight out effortless(this is more of an understatement ,because at the end ,it’s still effort. But more likely it’s how I rate my writing. If it seems effortless , I’ll either discard it or just try to redo it over. Sometimes it takes three or four time of redos and I could still find it effortless and just give up.)

I usually write things about everything, ranging from my childhood to my modern life. I sometimes add dreamy and confusing visions in my writing. It helps with the more philosophical part of my stories. My uncle and dad love to talks , like quite much. They are basically storytellers. I was inspired today by my uncle , by how strongly he convinced me to not get government help.

It’s his speech about how some of the black people here has multiple girlfriends from left and right and getting social welfare from the Hong Kong government. It took my focus away from my dark take towards false hope inspired by Michael Scott from the show The office( it’s interesting tho, it’s still within polishing).Criticising the black people that he claims to be lazy, and keeping themselves poor in order to get away with rent with the government welfare programme around here.

As this pandemic is slowing killing my spirit to live on, jobs were harder to find and my income is getting tighter than ever before. My uncle found out about my actions in making an application towards government welfare, at that point I was eligible for that programme and I’m simply sick of my daily routine of binging The office and self quarantining. He simply urged me to quit that and keep finding a new job, like as if I’ve never been doing that for those week and I’ve figured it’s too late for me if i even get a job eventually. The rent is almost due, and my hands are still empty.

Remember the speech? It’s a problematic way to see the situation honestly. I’m sure that we are all equal when it comes to getting help from others, but often appliers get painted as the villain only because they are willing to be vulnerable and honest enough to seek for help. The last thing they want is a person like my uncle telling them how non-prideful that is and they are leeching on society. It takes real courage to walk into apply, as the negative stigmas around it is often invisible.

Even though he did hard work to live within one of the most expensive place in the world without government help as he claims, it doesn’t make him entitled to judge others in his moral high horse. It’s kinda harsh to be honest.

It’s easy to joke about living with government welfare as it’s common in expensive cities like these. And I never thought I’d even consider myself getting it. But here I was, deeply troubled by how my decisions has left me where I’m now. I’m always prepared to go for the high road, but it’s revelling that it also means that there will also be lesser support from the higher roads. I’m sure we all need support from time to time eventually, so what gives with this toxic mentality towards being disadvantaged?

The pride. Of overthinking and glamorising our own status. The shame. To let everyone know you are taking the “easy way” out in life.

Either way it’s hurtful to ourselves and others. So it’s crucial to sometimes look at the situation with a wider lens and learn the tools to survive around this concrete jungle. Some problems will get you stuck eventually, it’s perfectly a-ok to find help professionally if needed.

We are all humans, just chill and let us all prosper. ✨🌱

self help
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About the Creator

Basil Fresh

a mixed African Chinese. Probably trilingual, (putonghua counts right?) and has an Unquenchable thirst for knowledge and mochi.

*drooling*

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