There is a biblical passage that suggests we need “to ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. (Matthew 7:7-8). The formula presented in the Bible is ask, seek and find. The passage doesn’t include how difficult it is for people to ask for something. The writer Angela Donderi argues that there are two types of people in the world. They are askers and guessers.
A study at Harvard indicated that people in general engage in chunking which means we tend to think in terms of categories to deal with important experiences. It is why our phone numbers are grouped as --- --- ----. Try to remember phone numbers that are just that, a group of numbers as one. One way of chunking is to think of people as givers and takers. But Donderi’s premise raises another “grouping” phenomenon that is in our culture, askers and guessers.
Askers feel little angst when asking someone for something. There is little shame in asking. They tend to have little hurt when someone says “no” to them. Their asks can be for something big or small. They are fine with asking no matter how little or big the issue is that they want!
Guessers hate to ask for favors and feel guilty when they have to say “no” to anyone who asks them for something. They make excuses for why they can’t honor the request or finesse the response so that it is not a hard “no.” They feel that everything is on the line when they have to say “no” to another.
There are times when the ask is of two like-minded people with an asker asking another asker for something or a guesser needs to ask another guesser for something needed.
Timing can be involved in asking as well. I have had various experiences that most of us have had where someone “beats around the bush” to make us comfortable and then asks us for something that was the real reason for the conversation. I think that it is better for either category, asker or guesser, to start the exchange to indicate that you are there because you need something which you will get to at the end of the conversation. For me it keeps things clean with no hidden agenda because everyone dislikes hidden agendas.
I think the progression of ask, seek, and find laid out in the Gospel of as Matthew may be fine when dealing with asking God for something, but I don’t think that it helps people very much in their daily lives as the ask part can be pivotal for askers and guessers who could get tripped up on all three stages, ask, seek, knock. Something else is needed.
When asking for help with something whatever category you are in, it still puts us in the one down position because the other has more power in the relationship. They have what we want.
I have already written several blogs on emotions that we would do anything to avoid such as guilt, vulnerability, and rejection. Since it is not as easy as it sounds as we read in the Gospel of Matthew, I wish that disclaimer would have been articulated by him for everyday needs of people in interpersonal relationships. In a way, he did do that for in religion we have something called grace which means you could be in relationship with someone where you expect punishment and are surprised when you get a non-punishing caring response. The bottom line of doing therapy is to do just that. It’s called transference. We have experienced enough rejection, guilt, and embarrassment in our lives that we expect the same from the therapist. When the therapist doesn’t respond like someone else did in a harmful way, we begin to lessen the power of those emotions of guilt, rejection, and vulnerability. Those emotions are alive and well in their genesis when we are younger and powerless and are literally surrounded by bigger people who we wish to placate. Later in life those three emotions can appear in the form of other people such as peers with whom we want to have a sense of belonging.
One of the joys of being Chaplain at EA for 38 years and teaching thousands of students, and alumni, as well knowing parents, and peers has provided me with a rare opportunity. Regarding helping people get connected to a position that they wanted, they would often come to me. That has nothing to do with me and everything to do with the position that afforded me access to many. The community would say, “Rev. knows people. Go see him.” The old saying is true that it is who you know as well as what you know that can form important moments in one’s life.
I never asked, for the most part, anyone something for me. It was to help others with the caveat that I may have to come to you someday to help someone else, so the connections multiplied exponentially. I know it sounds a bit like Don Corleone in the Godfather movies. Recently, I found the situation reversed. I had to make a big ask of someone who could be helpful to another person who needed assistance. I realized how little asking that I did in my life, so it felt strange. It helped me to realize just how difficult and powerful that verse of Matthew and those emotions of grace overcoming rejection, guilt, and vulnerability can be.
Sometimes it comes back to you in the most unexpected times. After the graduation at EA this year, I had a former student who left the chapel when the event was over who got to a space where he could make a call to me and said, “Thank you for all you did for my family and me!” He said it was his first thought as he was exiting the chapel. I know that he will help someone in the future who comes to me and needs a helping hand if he is in a position to help another. It’s a version of “pay it forward.”
“Ask, seek, find,” the antidote to rejection, guilt, and vulnerability. It’s called grace or “there but for the grace of God, go I.”
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