I think I got into social work because I had this idea of it somehow “killing” my ego. It seems silly, but it felt very real at the time. There's a sadness to watching your idealism and convictions go to shit. Not to mention that working in such a thankless and fucked system will kill a sacred part of you. I feel tired. For the most part, people do not want help. They want money or they want drugs or they want death. [Emphasis added.]
The corollary to this would be that most people aren’t interested
in the truth. A lot of people don’t want
help; a lot of people don’t want the truth.
A good rule of thumb to extrapolate from this would be to
not help anyone unless they specifically ask you to, and to not tell anyone
what you believe unless they ask you to.
This sounds heartless, but it is really the best policy because your
help and honesty will simply be rebuffed and ignored by those who do not want
it, and no amount of wishing, on your end, will change the fact that someone
just doesn’t want your help. Or your
opinion.
