The Best Place to Find a Helping Hand is at The End of Your Arms
1.Introduction: A Helping hand: a phrase representing assistance, cooperation and aid to achieve a defined objective.

2.The scope of helping hands: individuals, groups, societies, states and nations.

3.Factors necessitating a helping hand: economic, psychological, physical, intellectual, political or military.

4.Thesis: The best place to find help is from your own self.

5.Pitfalls of seeking external help
a. Conflict of interests arise
b. Objectives may need to be realigned
c. The consequences of being indebted
d. Adversely affects self-confidence, self-esteem and degradation of states among others.

6.Anti-thesis
a. Interdependence-in our DNA.
b. Increases harmony and cooperation in society.
c. Can be the difference between life and death-natural calamities.

7.Interdependence and seeking dependence-a difference.
8.Conclusion: “Beggars are not choosers”- so choose not to beg.

Essay

The idea of a “helping hand” is as old as the history of life on planet Earth and represents the act of assistance, aid and help to achieve or as set of goals. This aid can either be delivered or requested and to “find a helping hand” lies in the domain of requesting assistance as opposed to “giving a helping hand” which means to provide aid and deliver assistance.
In the course of this essay, the idea of requesting help will be examined in the context of it being acceptable or unacceptable; the other alternative being to “help yourself”.

Hence the domain of these requests for external help will be discussed followed by the reasons as to why such a scenario arises in the first place. These reasons include constraints that are economic, physical, political intellectual or even psychological in nature.

The reasons for not requesting or even relying on others for help will be contrasted with the benefits of such and endeavor to conclude that looking up to others for solution of one’s problems is is a problem in itself.
Who needs help? The contemporary setting of our world leads to the inevitable answer, “Everyone”. From individuals to groups pertaining to lesser known cultural groups to powerful political parties and scientific societies and from nation-states to regional blocs, all of them have objectives to be fulfilled and goals to be achieved.

Whether an individual wants to climb the social ladder or a state vies for food security, there always opens an opportunity to seek “a helping hand”. Hence an outlook of such factors is necessary to establish whether a subject should rely on the self or on others.

These reasons can be economic, social, political and intellectual and can pertain to an individual, group or a country.

For individuals, the economic circumstances can be as trivial as buying a new luxury product or as important as a life-saving medical expense. For states the circumstances usually lie in the economic, social security and political domain. This is because every state vies for economic, social and political security as well as physical and internal security.

Considering the other reasons, an intellectual circumstance in the case of a state can be the need for transfer of technology as an example. The need for enhancing art and culture in their respective societies may be considered an intellectual exercise for which external help may be desired.

All of these objectives and may others like them have two ways of fulfillment. The first is to strive on your own and leave no stone unturned by utilizing available resources that are your property. The second approach is to ask others to do it for you.

The second approach, though less strenuous, accompanies various pitfalls with itself. In most cases, the objectives of the subject do not match those of the assistance provider and each tries to secure its own agenda.
For example, loans from the donor agencies such as the International Monetary Fund(IMF) does assist in the economic recovery of the nation but comes with strings attached. The governments find their own policies easily superseded by those of the donor agencies. This is a cost of mismatch in objectives whereby the agency ensures the payback capacity of the state by implementing its own policies while the state agrees to become a mere onlooker.

This phenomenon further curtails the independence of individuals, groups and states alike, since a realignment of objectives is necessary to resolve the conflict of interest. It provides an opportunity to the stronger party, which in most cases is the assistant, to gain greater benefit from the enterprise at the expense of the assistance-seeker.

As the saying “ Beggars are not choosers” reinforces the need for self-reliance, it also points to the consequences of being indebted to someone. These consequences arise from either moral, strategic or even an economical liability.

The moral implications for individuals require them to return a helping hand with an equal gratitude. This can lead to situations where helping back may mean an activity or objective that the subject may not approve of but still gets to do it. Many organizations like drug cartels and extremist organizations thrive by assisting vulnerable individuals and then demanding favors in return.

Extreme conditions also necessitate economic assistance for example of tenants from landlords , and that too, on conditions as harsh as the ‘selling’ of daughters in marriage or bonded-labor. The legality of such agreements aside, such can be the consequences of ‘finding a helping hand’ at a place other than one’s own self.

All of these have a net effect of lowering of self-confidence self esteem and most importantly social standing of the subject. Individuals may turn from being respected to mere paupers in the eyes of the society and nations demoted in the eyes of the world.

However, it can be easily argued that interdependence is the essence of the ecosystem we live in. Hence, this is engraved in our DNA. We depend on plants to produce the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat while plants require our feces for their nutritional growth. The flowers depend o the butterfly to carry its seeds and the nectar is what the butterfly relies on.

Most importantly, man is a social animal and societies grow on the basis of one unit depending on the other unit. The ability and trait of getting and giving help is the essence of a healthy society. It leads to greater cooperation between individuals, who are the building blocks of a society. Since societies collectively make up the human species, a harmonious world can be imagined where every individual is willing to help the other.

Apart from the philosophical point of view, the request for aid can also be the difference between life and death for individuals and also countries. A case in point can be a natural calamity befalling a country unprepared in disaster management or lacking in resources to combat, for example, an epidemic.
The only viable option such a situation offers is to seek a helping hand. It goes without saying that this hand should surely be other than the one at the end of one’s shoulder because of the time constraint attached to the situation. Similar situations can arise in the lives of individuals as well where time constraint necessitates external help. This help is taken without regard to consequences as well.

Moreover”When great minds come together, great things happen”. This is especially true for areas of collaboration which is born from the nucleus of cooperation and most importantly assistance. Hence, finding another helping hand may not necessarily mean being subdued, having your initial objectives massacred or being indebted. Instead it can be transformed into a better approach, a quicker solution or a masterpiece product.

Yes; a quick solution can be down the line. Yes; external help may become necessary and though we interdependent but there is a difference between being interdependent and seeking dependence. There is a difference between giving help,as envisaged to be the trait of cooperative individuals ad harmonious societies, and a difference in relying on others for your goals.
Though the character building individuals, and in turn societies and nations, should be done to inculcate the qualities of helping those in need , however, under no circumstance should those in need be taught anything other than to try and fulfill their needs on their own and keep their self-respect intact as far as possible. It is this philosophy that will lead to a healthier society rather than permitting dependence in the guise of interdependence.

Secondly, though ‘great minds’ may create a masterpiece but this is when both of them are ‘great’ and equally comparable in terms of skills or resources. It is hence disparity I power which leads to one to give assistance and the other to be at the receiving end. In the other case, the exercise is not assistance rather collaboration which acceptably benefits the groups involved. Hence the argument that assistance and the subsequent forming of groups to achieve a shared(even curtailed) objective leads to better results is only true if the participating subjects wield equal influence over each other, else helping yourself is a better option.

Lastly, if circumstances as calamitous as natural disasters arise or situations where life and property are endangered then such a program can be given leverage.

However such exercises are no excuse for a person, group or nation of their incompetence. These should rather serve as a pretext for finding out ways to combat similar situations in the future and avoid laying hands in front of others for their solution. This can be done by anticipation of the problem that leads to the gathering of relevant resources for any such depression in life and finally a plan for execution to combat it once confronted.

Hence in the light of the above mentioned arguments, it can be safely stated that depending on others for the fulfillment of one’s needs and wants starts from embarrassment and ends in anger. Though necessary in extreme situations, such acts undermine the subjects’ prestige among other subjects. Without regard to how interdependent a society may become, the only pillar upon which the building of succor stands firm is when it is mutual and not one-sided; where one hand is in the wallet while the other is raised in mid-air anticipating what contents emerge from the former.

As the case of anticipation discussed is rightly summed up in the proverb “ Beggars are not choosers”- we should choose not to beg.

I just want to say one thing.....
Your thread happened to pass by my sight and it's title is giving an impression of like 'hey check it otherwise you'll be responsible of not doing it better in my next attempt ' and i compelled to reply
That is because you write "else i won't"
no offense

__________________
......"Do not be afraid;I am with you,all Hearing and all Seeing"(20:46).

Good attemp.

Sent from my SM-G355H using Tapatalk

Haha, that is one way of portraying how the glass is half-empty The flip-side of the impression might have been " Please point out the mistakes in this first attempt since I have humbly considered you all to be my teachers and critics"

Your first 3 points should not have been there as they don't directly hit the requirement of the topic. You should rather have started your essay right from the thesis statement because it's very important and therefore should be written first. You have done well right from the point 4, thesis statement. Good effort, keep it up.

__________________
Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it.

Thank you very much for pointing out my mistake.

I just wanted to ask whether we should give definitions etc that we perceive of the keywords in the topic?Because that is what I have tried to do, a kind of build-up to the essay, is that a wrong approach?(not to mention its obvious advantage, the word count ).

Lastly, my word count is just a mere 1500 including the paragraphs you mentioned that need to be omitted(making the word count even worse). Is that going to be heavily penalized?