Please Do Me A Favor

“Please do me a favor.” These are words that are very difficult for me to ask, how about you?

Yet, for over seventy years I have uttered this phrase more times than I can count. Most authors would be very happy to stay behind their typewriter or computer console and never have to market their books, but unless one is independently wealthy marketing books is part of the price of publication. As a part of that process most authors have to spend time asking friends to write reviews on Amazon, Barnes & Noble’s website, and Good Reads, and to ask other authors to write favorable blurbs touting the book. So yes I have had to learn to say, “please do me a favor,” but it doesn’t get any easier.

I meditated this morning as to why those words are so hard to utter. Part of it is an acknowledgement that I need help, which as part of the human race doesn’t make me unique. We all need help from one another is so many ways, not just from friends and family but from complete strangers. Each human unless one lives in a cave eating roots and berries relies on others.

I wonder in God’s plan he realized how dependent we would become on each other. I suspect he did, and part of his disappointment in all of us must be how we fight, argue, and claim superiority over each other and often say “no” to a request for help.

Saying, “Please do me a favor” is an acknowledgement of our dependency on others. After thinking and meditating on why it is so difficult for me to say those words I’ve come to the conclusion that I need to get over it. Please can you do me a favor is part of God’s plan for all of us. His plan also tells me I should always answer the question with a hearty “yes” and how can I help. That is how it all is supposed to work.

About the author

Webb Hubbell is the former Associate Attorney General of The United States. His novels, When Men Betray, Ginger Snaps, A Game of Inches, The Eighteenth Green, and The East End are published by Beaufort Books and are available online or at your local bookstore. When Men Betray won one of the IndieFab awards for best novel in 2014. Ginger Snaps and The Eighteenth Green won the IPPY Awards Gold Medal for best suspense/thriller. His latest, “Light of Day” will be on the bookstands soon.

5 Comments +

  1. Happy to help, dear friend… Will also call the guy at Powells again… sooner or later he HAS to say yes!

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