Brain Food #581
The abundance of help
Thoughts of the day
It is not that we don’t all have troubles, or just too much to do; it is just that not everyone is talking about them, or asking for help. Sometimes we will be the ones needing help, sometimes the ones asking for it. And for those who feel helpless, it is not that those around them do not have the means to help, but that they haven’t noticed.
Letters between artists can be revealing. Frida Kahlo and Georgia O’Keeffe shared an unlikely friendship, tied by their artistic endeavours and perils. In the letter below, Kahlo writes to O’Keeffe to console her after she failed to deliver on a commission, which subsequently had a heavy impact on her mental health.
“I would like to tell you every thing that happened to me since the last time we saw each other, but most of them are sad and you mustn’t know sad things now. After all I shouldn’t complain because I have been happy in many ways though. Diego is good to me, and you can’t imagine how happy he has been working on the frescoes here. I have been painting a little too and that helped. I thought of you a lot and never forget your wonderful hands and the color of your eyes. I will see you soon. I am sure that in New York I will be much happier.”
Though O’Keeffe was nearly twenty years her elder, in the letter Kahlo is offering all the support she can -to someone she idolised- despite the fact that she herself had recently had a miscarriage, been hospitalized, and had to suffer through her mother’s death. Kahlo acknowledges her own pain, but does not share it explicitly with her friend.
In the letter, she mentions her husband Diego, who was her own source of support at the time. What if help is seen as a means of ‘forgivable’ exchange that flows between people? For those that have been helped, they will help others. Those who believe help is unnecessary will neither offer it nor receive it.
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