How fortunate, you say?

Whenever Trading Spouses is on, I simply must watch. I just can’t resist.
The premise is okay—not terribly thought provoking, but interesting because they always manage to find the most extreme families to pair up. And today’s rerun on CMT was no different: a farmer’s wife swapped her place with a snooty little thing from Fort Lauderdale who was, if I may be honest, not as pretty as she thought, nor a big user of sunscreen (which she needed to be).
Actually, I liked the family that lived on the farm. They were a little too detached about the death of one of their animals, but perhaps if I lived on a farm, I might need the ability to detach a bit too. I guess it’s something they see a lot. Life in the city can be so sanitized—we never see our food before it arrives in a neat package or is cleanly wrapped by the local butcher. We have no real sense of the world of slaughtering animals. But I digress…
The point is, this family was pretty down to earth and quite likable. But the beach bunny from Florida had ideas. She decided from the beginning that she would breathe life and culture into these poor, small-minded country folk. She gabbed on and on about her wonderful life in Florida, and constantly made demeaning comparisons between life on the farm and life at the beach. She even had the audacity to announce that her room at home was much larger than the one being offered to her by her host family. She lamented that the kids could not go to the beach every day as hers did (I lamented that her kids would probably have skin cancer by the time they reached high school).
But what really set me off was an observation she made about the family. In her video diary, she pointed out that “they are so fortunate to have me here. I can help them better themselves. It’s what I like to do—help people.”
How fortunate? Really? Did they ask for that help, that “betterment”? I looked up the definition of help, and part of the act of helping consists of providing that which is sought. What’s more, she insulted them by reading the farmer’s teenage children foreign language primers, which were designed for children in elementary school. Wow—I never thought of enlightening people in such a manner.
Her actions really bring up a good point, though—what is the real reason we “help” others? Is it to help them—to be of service, which comes from a place of love—or is it simply to help ourselves? There’s a difference, and it’s a fundamentally important one.