We all need accompaniment

WE need to be strongly reminded of this basic truth about

ourselves. We tend to ignore it. Especially when we think that we are

already grown-up and mature, well endowed with talents and resources,

and enjoy a great sense of independence, we have to pound it hard on

our mind and heart that we, in fact, would need accompaniment all the

more.

            We have to debunk the idea that accompaniment is needed

only by babies and little children, and by some persons with special

needs. True, these persons need the basic accompaniment of the

physical and emotional type. But otherwise, we all need accompaniment

in all stages of our life, because accompaniment is not only in the

physical and emotional aspects.

            Accompaniment should be exercised in the higher and more

important aspects of our life—mental, psychological, moral and

spiritual, etc. In these aspects, we can never say that our need for

it would already be fully satisfied. In fact, the older we get, the

more experienced and accomplished we are in our life, the more would

be our need for accompaniment.

            And that’s simply because the challenges and trials we

face as we get older and more accomplished become more subtle and

complicated. And we always need others to face them. We need all kinds

of help. Woe to us if we are left only to ourselves to face all of the

challenges and trials in life.

            No man is an island, a 17th century English poet, John

Donne, said it well. It means that we do badly when isolated from

others and need to be part of a community in order to thrive. The

basis for this assertion is that we as persons are meant to enter into

relation with others all the time. We are not only individuals. We all

belong to the family of humankind.

            So we have to realize that that we need to be accompanied

always be others as well as to accompany others. There’s both an

active and passive side of this need of ours for accompaniment. If we

do not feel that need yet, then it is about time that we develop an

abiding sense of that need.

            Let’s remember that this need is not something biological

only, or physical. It is in the higher level, that is, in the area of

our moral and spiritual need for accompaniment, that we would need to

make a deliberate and conscious act of our will to stir up that need

in us. In the end, we need to ask for grace to make that need always

felt and addressed to in the most important aspects of our life—the

moral and the spiritual.

            This will require some training for this purpose, and that

training in its turn will also require some basic dispositions. We

need to be humble and simple for that need to come and develop in us.

Otherwise, we won’t feel that need.

            We have to acknowledge that our life has very complex and

complicated aspects that need to be addressed adequately. The

development and refinement of virtues to make us more human and later

on more Christian would simply demand help from others. Let’s remember

that our humanity and Christianity are always a work in progress. We

can never say we are human enough or Christian enough.

            And especially when we have to give accompaniment to

others, we need to be tough not only physically or emotionally, but

also psychologically, morally and spiritually, because definitely we

will have to bear the burden of the many complicated issues and

problems that we will unavoidably encounter along the way.

            Let’s hope that this business of accompaniment becomes a

common and universal concern and that we would know how to go about

it, both in its passive and active aspects!