DailyJim: We need a lot of people to take care of us

Hello everyone, welcome to another Daily Gym. Today is Thursday, January 2nd, 2025, and what I want to talk about is we need a lot of people to take care of us. What do I mean by this? I think often we try to take care of ourselves. We think that we are independent, self-reliant human beings, and we don't need other people to take care of us. I just think that's such a myth we have people taking care of us all the time and we need them if i go to a restaurant i need the people who run the restaurant to take care of me by preparing the food by making sure that the food is not poisonous to make sure that the restaurant is safe that there's no violence happening there like so many things i have to trust them that they're taking care of me, and I need them to. If I am traveling, I have to trust that people will take care of me there. Having lived overseas in many different places, I remember in Costa Rica, I got sick. I got sick in a country where I didn't speak the language, and I was living with a host family, and she had promised not to speak English. So at three in the morning, I am super nauseated and speaking Spanish, and she was taking care of me.

So many of us have so many people taking care of us, we just don't realize it. And we need these people.

Some of us reject it. You know, some of us will push people away and say, no, I'm fine. I don't need your help. I don't need your support. I don't need your care. I don't need your love. But we do. But we do.

When we're in trouble, when we're traveling, so I'm back home in the States, and, you know, if I have friends in Kenya, and if they get hurt, and I'm not there, they need other people who will take care of them, who will take them home, who will take them to the hospital, who will help them find a job. We need other people in our lives. We can't just rely on one person or we can't just rely on ourselves. And I'm reminded these days of, it's about almost the two-year anniversary of when my mom passed away. It'll be two days from today.

And when she passed away, there were so many people who were willing to help. So many people who showed so much love and so much care to me, to my dad, to my sister, to my aunts, uncles, to anyone. Like there were so many people who showed up.

And I wonder if those people show up all the time, we just push them away. And when we get into a moment of death, especially death, or we just get fully overwhelmed with emotions, those are the times we accept their care.

And I think, what would it be like if we accepted their care more often? Not even just accepted it, but asked for it. In a moment of death, people offer, here, can I do this for you? Can I cook some food? Can I do this? Can I do that? And often we, in the death, we accept it, but other times we push it away. But how often do we ask for their care? How often do we ask for their love, their support, their help, however you want to phrase it, assistance?

Rarely. I think many of us rarely ask for this. And then we don't get the care and the love from the people and we blame them. Oh, these people don't love us. They don't care bus, we don't ask for it. Or if they offer it, we don't accept it. And so I'm talking about this in the larger context. One aspect of that where I want to receive more care and more help and more assistance and more love is in finances. And I think it's such a touchy subject. You're not supposed to receive love or care from other people when it comes to money. But how do children get raised? How do new startups start? They don't just start. They often have capital. How do they get capital? They often ask friends and family to take a risk. I remember reading something about this angel investor, and he says, angel investing is not so much about making a lot of money. It's about being involved in the process. It is a way to reach out and care about these people and to help lift them up and see if something really exciting can happen. And it's a way to get involved. It's a way to build that relationship. Sometimes caring, yes, helps the person who receives it, but often it helps the person who is on the other side, the person who is giving it. I have a phone call coming in, so let me pause. I'll resume. Speaking of caring, you know, sometimes, you know, we have, I don't know, I'm going to make something up about not answering the phone call, but I'll call back in a second. But yeah, I think we just need a lot of people to take care of us. I've been very fortunate that my my parents took care of me financially a lot longer than most parents will. A lot longer than most parents could.

And yet we need other sources of love and other sources of care. How many people am I taking care of? How many people? You know, I had a conversation with somebody the other day and they're like, oh, do you see me as a gold digger? I was like, gold digger? No, I see you as a person who takes care of people in your family. And so therefore, and takes care of yourself and wants to enjoy life and live a little bit. So, no, I see you as a person that, yes, if you're taking care of a lot of other people, you need other people to take care of you. And that's how it goes. That's how humans function.

And so, for me, I think one of the biggest barriers is believing that we don't need people to take care of us or we only need one person to take care of us. Maybe that's our spouse or maybe it's our parent or maybe it's our, who knows, maybe it's our one employer, whatever.

But I just don't think that's how the world functions. And I think we're just denying it to ourselves and pretending that we can go out and take care of a lot of people and that nobody's taking care of us. Well, or nobody wants to. People want to take care of each other. It feels so good to help somebody. It feels so good. And how often do we deny these people this opportunity to take care of us and to just give to us, just to help us, just to assist us, because they love us, they care about us. They want us to be well. And yeah, maybe they want the people that we're helping to be well as well, but a lot of it's just they care about us. To receive that love from somebody and to know that, It's okay. It's okay to receive love. It's okay to receive money. It's okay to receive a couch to sleep on. It's okay to receive a meal. It's okay to receive a hand getting up, you know, when we're feeling sick or our bones are weak. It's okay to receive help from other people. And not only is it okay, but often it gives so much to the person who is giving.

It can feel really good to give. It can feel really good to help. It can feel really good to take care of somebody.

I think the world would be so different if we just started to let ourselves feel good when other people took care of us. So on that note, I'm going to start asking for people to take care of me. That's one thing I want to do this year. I want to ask people to take care of me. It scares the hell out of me, but yeah, I don't know. It could be an interesting experiment to see what would my life be like if I wanted people to take care of me.

Yeah, so yeah, let's try it. All right, bye.