the habit of depending upon others for advice, he is not likely to break himself of it in a week, nor yet in a month.
This is not to imply that to give advice, and, when possible, to provide inspiration is not a legitimate and important form of helpfulness. To establish a principle of never doing this would be as unwise as always to supply it whenever it was asked. There is, however, a place beyond which one cannot go. This is where one finds the burden of decisions resting upon himself instead of—where it belongs—upon the person who is striving to make a better adjustment to life.
Sickness and physical handicap are perhaps the most difficult circumstances in which to tell whether or not—and to what extent—one should carry the responsibility of the individual in trouble. It is not so much in the acute illnesses that this question arises, for the man who is in the midst of one of these attacks obviously is capable of no exertion other than that involved in the will to recover. It is rather during convalescence, in chronic handicaps, or in minor indispositions that the issue develops.
In such situations the patient frequently believes that he is unable to undertake any of the
