“You should’ve asked”
“Here is the english version of my now famous “Fallait demander” !”
I’ve been thinking about the question “what can I do to help” a lot. It’s ostensibly the right thing to ask, but there is so much labor involved in answering the question. A friend of mine got married recently and, of course, got the question all the time. Even when she had a concrete thing for them to do, she found that people would do it distractedly and then do the thing they ACTUALLY wanted to help with (like undesired elaborate plans for the flower arrangements or whatever).
I’ve been trying to avoid asking people that question and instead proposing a thing and asking if that would be helpful. Or even better, just doing what seems useful and monitoring their reaction. There is some working out of boundaries, figuring how much ownership they are willing to give you and how much they expect you to have. But I realize how nice it feels when someone really acts on the implied intention to help you, or implicitly sees the space they can be responsible for.
