“I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other.” – Rainer Maria Wilke.

In recent years, I’ve talked a lot and thought a lot about finding truth beneath my fear and the meaning of doing good.

One of the things I am thinking about a great deal on during my social isolation, my sheltering-in-place, is the chance to think about the importance of learning when not to help, as well as when to help.

I confront so many needs, I am always having to make hard choices.

Doing good for me is about choice and thought, not drama or impulse. It is a teacher, not an emotion.

I’ve come to believe that knowing when to say no is of equal, if not greater importance than saying yes.

Because not knowing how and when to say no is fatal to the idea of doing good, and often destructive to the people I think I am helping.

When help becomes indiscriminate, it is destined to be short-lived.

Rainer Maria Wilke, perhaps the greatest writer to ever explore the nature of creativity, wrote that the most profound experience of the creator is feminine, for it is the experience of receiving and bearing.

Creativity is essential to doing good.

I believe the same is true of doing good. The Army Of Good has a number of magnificent and loving men, but it is overwhelmingly female.

I believe many women have an intuitive understanding of pain and need that many men do not possess, at least not instinctively, or are taught not to show.

In my experience with the Army Of Good, women understand and empathize with vulnerability; men are terrified of showing themselves to be vulnerable.

I believe that most good – and most creation – is the result of one’s having been broken, tortured, or in danger, of having gone through an experience to the very end, where it is impossible to go any further.

I am drawn to Rilke’s idea of respecting the solitude and strength of the other, perhaps that can be the highest good I can ever do.

This kind of love writes Rilke, is the “love that consists in this, that two solitudes protect and border and salute each other.”

This respect for the other’s strength and solitude keeps me from presuming weakness or need that can enable both and break down pride and confidence – all to be helpful.

My friend Eve Marko wrote on her blog yesterday that she felt sad and lonely.

I instantly emailed her and asked if she needed to talk. We agreed to speak in the early evening. I was expected to comfort her at this troubling time; I assumed she needed my help. I thought I was doing good.

This was my ego speaking, not my experience. Eve lost her husband a year ago, and so I sometimes think she needs me. That can be condescending and suffocating, not helpful.

She can take care of herself and wants to. She can ask for help if she needs to. She didn’t.

The minute we spoke – we are good friends now – I realized I was wrong to have intruded.

She was fine, busy dealing with her rambunctious dogs. Yes, she was sad and lonely that morning, but that happens, especially now, she said, and she had moved on. It passes, she said.

I backed off, and we chatted briefly and said goodbye. I believe strongly that most people, given a chance, must come to life in their way and time.

If I try to shorten or inject myself into their process in the name of doing good, I can end up doing more harm than good.

My sister, who is in her 70’s, just took a demanding job as a cashier in a supermarket.  She is on the front lines.

Jane is brave and very devoted to being kind to people. She is not only risking the virus in her work but tries hard to talk to people and cheer them up.

I called her, assuming this work was draining and traumatic for her. But she loves the job; she loves the sense she is helping people eat and get through a difficult time, even though some can get nasty.

She did not need my concern, just my conversation.

Doing good can spawn both narcissism and a swollen ego, sometimes the heroic thing to do is nothing at all. I am thanked a lot and appreciated, for which I am grateful.

I am cautious about believing it.

Good that respects solitude and independence often protects against another consequence of too much good: it is a boundary against amateur psychotherapy, an epidemic abomination that has turned tens of millions of Americans – especially on social media – into intrusive and dangerous quasi-psychiatrists.

I think we all want to be healers, but that isn’t merely a button we can pin on ourselves. It means something to be a professional.

In our time, therapy is practiced without credentials, competence, or even a knowing invitation.  I know too many people who are convinced they can alter the consciousness and soothe the mind without any real training or supervision.

The idea of two different solitudes protecting each other encourages real help, not faux help that doesn’t last or work.

Dog people often presume to dispense veterinary advice online, as if six years of veterinary college is meaningless compared to their instincts and home-made remedies.  It takes even longer to be a good shrink.

This is a boundary the Internet has virtually destroyed.

Being humble is the pathway to good. It discourages overreaching. And over teaching. I never tell other people what to do, and I don’t like it much when they tell me what to do.

My life has left me filled with humility if little money or brains. I can be obnoxious, but arrogance is a long way off.

I am especially careful to refer my friends to professional therapists when they are in trouble – they laugh at me for this – because playing shrink is the absolute opposite of doing good. That is one place where I always say no.

People in need ought to be given a chance to grow and change and heal themselves, an opportunity I was given. The best help I have ever given people, the most good, has come from encouraging them to get professional advice.

I am not the best place for that kind of help, and I never forget it.

Again and again, in my relationship with Maria, I’ve learned to not help as often as I help.

She doesn’t need me to solve her problems or rush to her side when she cries, or to try to ally every fear.  I see that she can do those things for herself, and grow stronger and more creative in the process.

It would destroy our relationship for me to intrude upon her solitude and presume to help with every problem.  She has come to life in her way and time, not mine.

Today, we both woke up edgy and discouraged by the new and the rainy and gloomy day.

I knew instantly that what she needed to do wasn’t help, but the space to go to her studio and make something beautiful. I would never stand in the way of that process, and the help that works best of all is the help that comes from inside, not outside.

She respects my solitude when I write, sometimes through the day and the night.

Respecting other people’s strength and solitude – learning when not to help and when to help – is even more important to me now, as we enter a period of good and perhaps, unprecedented (in recent memory) need.

I have learned to be thoughtful and cautious about who I help and how.

I don’t have access to anywhere near enough money to help everyone in need. I’ve made that mistake.

I have also learned that money is rarely the best and only way to help people. It is a sinkhole. I am careful about how much money I request, and for what.

My help is for things that can be seen and documented, not for feelings and life-changing thoughts.

I look to small acts of kindness, not big or dramatic ones.

Every day, I am encouraged to do more, get bigger, apply to more corporations, try new things, organize petitions, incorporate my work, and every day, every bone in my body says no. Stay small, respect the needs of the people who send money, make good choices, make the sometimes awful choice to let people find their way.

The help I know and am drawn to tends to be material – grocery gift cards, Amazon Wish Lists, blog posts pushing Jean’s Place take-outs, room airconditioners for hot summers, laptops and snacks for quarantined students, ribbons for the prom, textbooks for the students and the teachers, crafts and art supplies and warm shoes for the Mansion residents, pizza and masks for the Mansion aides.

Things that people can see and touch, something that enriches their daily lives. The big picture is for the angels; a Catholic Friend said she wasn’t going to overwhelmed by the corona crisis, “the Blessed Mother can  Handle It.”

I will help the wonderful lady who cleans my house by continuing to employ her and pay her during an awful time. I can’t help her with her bills.

She knows about disinfectants and social isolation. We both are taking the virus seriously.

In the coming weeks, we will all be asked to help others in greater need than I can remember in my life.

I  will keep these thoughts and guidelines in mind:

It can’t be only about money, that is a drive off the cliff, especially in times of such great need As harsh as it can be and feel, everyone, must figure out how to make their way, to live their own lives by what some call “the great laws of nature.”

The dangers for me are what the shrinks call co-dependence – give so many pieces of myself to others that there is nothing left for me. If I don’t learn how to say no, I’ll soon be unable to say yes.

The other danger is ego and pride.

Doing good does not make me a saint or an angel.

It doesn’t even make me a perfect human. It is sometimes tempting to think of oneself as noble and superior. I don’t.

Already, as the coronavirus creeps closer and closer to so many of us, millions and millions of people are trying to help. My inbox is stuffed with poems, videos, essays, and links, all intended to help me get through this time.

That is a beautiful thing to see, hopeful, and inspiring. But also numbing and overwhelming.

It triggers both joy and caution in me. It is more than I can read or absorb it fuzzes up my thinking.

The truth is, we can’t all help everyone at the same time. So I can’t read or absorb at look at this tsunami of caring, and I don’t want to. I want what I do to come out of my head, not someone else’s.

I believe I will have to make thoughtful and hard choices about help and doing good in the coming months, even years. And despite the great temptation to reach out and burn out, I need to make the good I do count.

And I need to be especially comfortable about saying no. That is always hard to do.

Not saying no is the Devil’s door. Doing good makes me humble, I want to kneel before the needy and the vulnerable, and give thanks that for a time, I can be the helper, not the helped.

This never makes me better than anybody else, or even as good.

I am so sorry for all of the suffering and disruption in our lives and our world. But doing good has become central, the highest goal of humanity. I’m working on getting ready.