Asking for Help and accepting it is a virtue

 

Ramayana, the epic glorifies the virtue of humility that Lord Ram possessed and we as people of the 21st century can still learn a lot from our old scriptures. Lord Ram was known to accept help from others graciously without judging the helper and his motives. Lord Ram accepted help from others regardless of whether the helper was offering help selflessly or was helping to gain favors in return.

During the war with Ravana, Lord Inder offered a chariot to fight only towards the end, when it was becoming clear the Lord Ram would win, even though he had fought the war thus far on foot. Lord Inder offered his chariot to impress upon Lord Ram and to build a favorable relationship with Lord Ram. Lord Ram knew very well that Lord Inder was offering his chariot conditionally and that too when it was evident that Lord Ram would win. Lord Ram took the help graciously to continue in the last stages of the war with Ravana.

Eventually when the war was won, many selfish entities, including Lord Inder came to congratulate Lord Ram, as if they had been there to support him from the very beginning. Lord Inder announced his pleasure that his chariot had been very helpful for Lord Ram to win the war, and went on to say that in the future if Lord Ram ever needed any help from him, he said to please ask for it without hesitation.

Lord Ram took up on Lord Inder’s offer immediately and requested Lord Inder to bring back to life the Monkeys who had sacrificed their lives in the war. Lord Inder sprinkled the holy nectar on the corpses, and all monkeys came back to life.

We as Men of modern India can learn immensely from the humility exhibited by Lord Ram. Often we shy away from asking for help, or when help is offered we refuse to accept it, making our lives and those of others unnecessarily difficult and complicated. Let us develop the sensibility to develop networks of relationships and ability to identify sources that can help us, and have the grace of accepting help from others.

Asking for help and accepting it in challenging times, is not a sense of weakness, but matter of being mature and sensible.

Equally important for us is to develop our ability to help others, and to overcome the tendency others may have to resist our assistance.

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