Lori Falce: We all need a little help with our bootstraps

My bootstraps have gotten a solid workout over my life.

That’s impressive if only because I rarely wear boots. As a rule, I wear flat black dress shoes with bottoms far too slick for Pennsylvania snow or rain. They have frequently led more to spectacular falls than impressive rises.

But theoretical bootstraps — the kind often cited as the key to success through hard work — those I like to think I have used. I have built a home and a career and a family. I have had problems and overcome them. I search for solutions before I ask for help.

At least I do now. However, I would be lying if I said that’s where I started.

I would not have had the opportunity to use my bootstraps if I hadn’t first been helped by others. By my mother and my grandmother, by aunts and uncles and cousins, by my stepfather, by friends and teachers, and even by strangers.

Sometimes I needed help because of bad luck and sometimes because of bad decisions. Sometimes it was a stupid move that taught me something, and sometimes it was stupidity I would repeat.

But until I was not just ready but able, I was blessed to have others to help me rise. I know that I am not alone in having people in my corner when I needed them. I hope everyone is as grateful for that intervention and assistance as I am for mine.

While watching a clip of Martin Luther King Jr. this week, I thought about the people who have helped me and the many times I have needed help.

“It’s all right to tell a man to lift himself by his own bootstraps, but it is cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps,” King said.

In addition to that truth, there is also what telling someone to pull himself up denies.

It shrugs off the work and commitment of all of those people who are there along the way. The ones who buy the boots or tie them on. The ones who show you the bootstraps and demonstrate what makes the old adage work. The ones who offer a hand to those who can’t stand alone because sometimes the bootstraps alone just don’t cut it.

Sometimes it is a person who makes that difference. Sometimes it’s a church that offers a shoe bank or food pantry. It could be an employer that acknowledges workers are people too and provides flexibility. Maybe it’s a nonprofit that helps keep the lights from being turned off when the rent is due.

And it might be a government program — whether the New Deal variety that might have helped your grandfather keep food on the table during the Depression or the child care assistance that makes it possible for a single mom to do the work that feeds and houses her kids.

We need to acknowledge the help, not to rely on handouts but to encourage hands being outstretched. No one is born with boots on. We all need that helping hand from time to time.

God knows I do. I still fall more than I would like, but it makes me more aware of other people trying to get to their feet. And if I can help anyone get their boots on, I consider it the best way to pay forward the help I’ve received.