Should I say no to someone who needs me?

I once wrote something that shocked my readers. Do not tell me, I said, of my obligation to put all poor men in good situations. Are they my poor? I admitted I sometimes gave, and was ashamed afterwards, because I gave not from conviction but from habit and the fear of seeming hard.nnI was not arguing for coldness. I was arguing for honesty. A gift made from fear, guilt or the wish to be thought kind is a small lie, and it does neither giver nor receiver much good. Your goodness, I said, must have some edge to it, or else it is none. A person who can never say no has no yes worth having, because it costs them nothing to say.nnSo look at the help you are being asked for, and ask whether you can give it as a free act, from your own conviction. If you can, give it gladly. If you would be giving only because you cannot bear to refuse, refuse. It will be kinder in the end than a resentful yes, which the other person will feel, and which will poison what is between you.nnThere is a deeper reason too. Each person has their own work to do, and no one else can do it for them. If you spend your whole life answering other people's needs, you may never discover what you yourself were for. Trust yourself. Insist on yourself. Then what you give will be something real.

I once wrote that all people are to be loved equally. But since you cannot do good to all, you are to pay special attention to those who, by the chances of time, place or circumstance, are brought into closer connection with you, as if by a kind of lot. You did not choose them, perhaps. But they have been placed in your path.nnThis gives you a principle and a limit at once. The principle is that need, especially the need of those close to you, makes a real claim. You cannot dismiss someone who depends on you by saying that you love all humanity equally. The neighbour God has placed beside you is the one you are asked to serve.nnThe limit is that you are not asked to do the impossible. You cannot meet every need, even of those close to you, and pretending you can is a kind of pride. I also taught that virtue is rightly ordered love: loving each thing as much as it deserves, in the right order. A love that gives everything to one person and nothing to the others in your care, or to your own soul and its duties, is disordered, however generous it feels.nnSo ask where this need falls in the order of your obligations. Who else depends on you? What do you owe your family, your work, your health, your prayers? If saying yes here means abandoning those, you may say no, and still love this person truly.

In my day, girls were raised from the cradle to please, to yield, to make themselves useful and agreeable to others, and to have no settled purpose of their own. They were praised for being gentle and self-sacrificing, and they were left weak, dependent, and frequently unhappy. I argued that this was not virtue. It was the absence of a self.nnI wrote that I did not wish women to have power over men, but over themselves. That is still the heart of it, for anyone, of any sex, who finds that they cannot say no. Power over yourself means having your own reasons, your own work, your own judgement of what is right, and acting from them rather than from the pressure of other people's wants.nnReal duties, to family, to friends, to those in need, are best done by people who are independent. A person who has reasoned their way to a duty can carry it steadily. A person who simply cannot refuse is at the mercy of whoever asks loudest, and their help is often given to the most demanding rather than the most needy.nnSo ask yourself: if you say yes, is it because you have judged it right, or because you were trained to give way? If the first, go ahead, and do it well. If the second, practise refusing, kindly and firmly, until you are sure that your yes is your own. You will be of more use to everyone, including the person asking.