The Art of Helping Others

That if one truthfully wants to guide a man to a definite position, one must first of all be careful to meet him where he is and begin there.

This is the secret of the art of helping others. Any one who has not mastered this is himself deluded, when he thinks he is helping others. In other to help another effectively I must understand more than he - yet first of all, surely I must understand what he understands. If I do not know that, my greater understanding, will be of no help to him. If, however, I am expressing my greater understanding, it is because I am vain or proud, so that at bottom, instead of benefiting him, I want to be admired. But all true effort to help begins with himself -humiliation; the helper must first humble himself under him he would help, and there with must understand that to help does not mean to be a master but to be a servant, that to help does not mean to be ambitious but to be patient, that to help means readiness to endure for the time being that one is in the wrong and does not understand what the other understand.

* Quotation from Soeren Kierkegaard: The point of View for My Work as An Author: p.27, Harper, New York 1962.