Everyday Canvas

Helping and Egoism

Prompt: "As you grow older, you will discover that you have two hands, one for helping yourself, the other for helping others." Audrey Hepburn What are your thoughts about this?

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Helping oneself comes easily. We are all conditioned and possibly programmed even before birth to take care of number one. This is sometimes called the survival instinct.

Helping others comes later.

Some help those who have the same troubles or illnesses they or people they care about are suffering from. This, I call, helping through sympathetic sorrow. Nothing wrong with it, but it still refers back to one’s own self.

Some volunteering organizations and charities try to entice people into helping by saying or implying that:
Helping others feels good.
You’ll find a sense of purpose.
You can forget your own troubles and find happiness through helping.
Volunteering is a social activity. You won’t feel lonely.
If you help others you may live longer.
Helping others is a life-altering experience you need for your own growth.

Now, when you think about all these reasons, don’t they point to one’s own self, again?

Then, maybe just about everything reverts back to one’s own self.

I think the wish to help others should come from within oneself, through the simply feeling of empathy. Empathy is easier to feel toward individuals. In such a case, one’s helping should be subtle as to not make the other person feel indebted.

Also, talking about myself, I was raised to take care of what I did through the act of living. For example, when I stood up from a sitting position, I had to make sure the chair was pushed in or the cushions smoothed back to their original position. And if I were to see something messy, it would be a good idea to try to fix it.

This is because we live in a world where we have to make sure it stays livable for others because we are all one family: The human family.

Whether the good we do comes back to us or not.