As the New Year has rolled around, I’ve listened to a lot of resolutions. Folks want to better their bodies, themselves and their careers in 2014, making good on the promises they made for 2013 but failed to achieve. Be it either laziness or circumstance, one thing consistently stands out—the desire to do it on one’s own. “I want to do it myself,” friends and colleagues tell me. “I have to do it myself.”
Now, this sentiment may seem noble to you. There’s something seductive about doing it yourself, blazing a trail, taking agency over one’s life. Family and friends will offer solicited and unsolicited advice about your future betterment, and deciding to do it yourself puts the onus squarely on you. Besides, others helping you is embarrassing: you have to ask for help (OMG), you have to put yourself out there (awkward), you have to receive help (ugh), you might have to pay it back sometime (WTF). It’s much better to do it yourself.
At least that’s what people say. And they might have a point. No, wait a second, they don’t. They’re stupid. The sentiment is stupid: Do it yourself. How stupid.
You might think this is some sort of Jonathan Swift thing, a column drenched waist deep in satire. I’m going to set up a series of ridiculous expat arguments about why you should rely on others, in order to show you that you should rely on yourself. Nope. This is as earnest as a nightlife and entertainment column gets. I mean this from the bottom of my heart: use your connections. Do it with others. Get help. Get as much help as you can. Get more help. Then do it again.
The fundamental flaw I see in the “I’m going to do it myself” train of reasoning is that there’s a 99 percent chance you haven’t done it yourself to this point. You’re reading an HK Magazine and drinking an expensive coffee—you probably have some sort of means. How you got them I have no idea. There’s a good chance (based on our reader surveys) that you went to college. There’s a good chance that you’re a professional working in an office. You didn’t do that yourself. You got lucky by not being born a migrant worker on the mainland or a farmer in Bangladesh. You got lucky because you had parents or a parent who supported you, an educational system that helped you out, and were given the good fortune to learn English and/or Chinese, languages that are useful in a number of countries. You didn’t do that yourself.
Now I’m not going all “You didn’t build that” 2012 Obama here, but unless you were born in the jail that Bane was and fought your way out, you are partially a product of the good fortune that has surrounded you for (parts of) your life. And it’s important to acknowledge, accept, and embrace that fact.