Goodness is its own reward.
When we help others we are actually helping ourselves.
The joy and happiness that love and compassion for others bring is one of the best-kept secrets of humanity. The benefits are so enormous and consistent that you have to wonder why we don’t practice such kindness more often. Helping others always makes us feel good.
Helping Others Makes Us Feel Good. But Why?
Think back to times when you’ve given of yourself completely.
Maybe you nursed a sick friend back to health, helped in a soup kitchen, coached the school football team, volunteered to raise money for some charity. How did it make you feel? And why did it make you feel so good? What is there in loving and helping one another that is so nurturing to our souls?
Perhaps in doing so we are rediscovering our connectedness to one another. A hidden part of us thrills with joy when we reach out to one another in simple, everyday ways.
Ram Dass said it well in explaining what happens when we help one another:
“Caring for one another we sometimes glimpse an essential quality of our being. We may be sitting alone, lost in self-doubt or self-pity, when the phone rings with a call from a friend who’s really depressed. Instinctively we come out of ourselves, just to be there with her and say a few reassuring words. When we’re done, and a little comfort’s been shared, we put down the phone and feel a little more at home with ourselves. We’re reminded of who we really are and what we have to offer one another.”
Why We Don’t Help More Often
Unfortunately, our lives are busy. Sometimes we feel there’s no time to help. There are always so many things we have to do, and they all seem so important.
But if we do not value helping one another; if we do not see this as an important part of our growth and development, what does that say about us? What path are we on if loving kindness is not a part of our journey? Do we really think that making more money, watching another night of TV, or going out to a fine restaurant will ultimately make us happier?
We search for happiness in romance, achievements, possessions, exciting experiences, and all of these bring us some satisfaction, but always more is needed. The paradox is that if we are totally preoccupied with only our own happiness, we will never truly achieve it.
The Japanese have a word for neurotic self-preoccupation. It is seikatsu onchi; a term loosely translated as “tone-deaf about life.” This condition has us totally preoccupied with only ourselves. Every event and circumstance in our life is measured by how it affects us personally. Others are not considered. This self-centredness is the cause of most of our suffering. Think about it. When you’re unhappy, are you thinking about yourself or others? Always yourself. This should teach us something.
Loving Kindness in Action: Mother Emelda
The world mourned the passing of Mother Teresa, and rightly so, but the truth is that there are thousands of unknown Mother Teresas working out there, helping to make our world a kinder and gentler place. Emelda Damani is one of them.
Mother Emelda, as everyone calls her, founded and operates the “Welcome Home Centre,” a drop-in shelter in downtown Johannesburg. A devout Christian, she ministers to the homeless and most destitute not with religion, but with love.
Each day, as her doors open at 7 a.m., people drift in for some coffee and a place to relax, but mostly for Mother’s love. I was helping there one day and watched while she brushed the hair of a young prostitute, listening to the girl describe her night’s exploits and traumas.
When the girl finished, Mother embraced her, wrapping her arms around the young woman, and simply said, “Mother loves you.” No advice. No condemnation. Just unconditional love.
“The centre is called the Welcome Home Centre because everyone is welcome,” Mother Emelda says. “Many people are hurting. I am just one woman. I cannot help everyone, but everyone who comes here I will love.”
The practice of loving kindness is simply being open and responsive to others.
It is helping one another through small acts of kindness and compassion. Not once in a while, but regularly and consistently, so we lose our sense of isolation and begin to feel our oneness, and the joy that such oneness brings.
Our mind may try to conceptualize the idea that, “We are all one,” but we can never know this with only our mind. Not even an enlightened mind can know this. But our hearts know this truth intimately.
Helping Others Starts With Loving Yourself
The practice of loving kindness involves loving ourselves as well.
Compassion is not just for others, but for ourselves too. In many ways it must start with ourselves. For until we can love and appreciate ourselves, we cannot love and appreciate others. We must learn to see ourselves without the harsh glare of self-criticism, and come to the conclusion that we are good and worthy in who we are now, just as we are now.
This is not always easy. We live in a society and culture that holds up almost impossible ideals that we think we have to match. The millionaire, the celebrity, the beautiful model; success is often measured in what you’ve achieved, how much money you make or how good-looking you are. And if we fall short of these ideals we deem ourselves unworthy.
It is time to awaken from this nightmare.
What Happens When We Appreciate Ourselves
A great many of our problems in life occur because we don’t always appreciate ourselves.
Developing appreciation for ourselves allows us to see our potential as well as our problems. We discover that even though we’re not perfect, there is still immense value and beauty in who we are. Being open and honest with ourselves helps us to be open with others.
When we open our hearts large enough to include ourselves and let go of our harsh judgements, something wonderful happens within. We flower and grow strong in this ever-present love and acceptance.
Unconditional, total love is called for. No part of ourselves or others is to be omitted. Even the unappealing parts are to be loved and accepted.
This is the challenge. And when we rise to the challenge, great alchemy takes place. There is a new dawning. A life without shame or judgement. A life nourished from within. A life of self-acceptance. A life of loving kindness towards all.
Seeing ourselves without the harsh glare of self-criticism takes practice. The way we think about ourselves is a habit, and habits can be changed. This is the work I teach in Mind Power: noticing the thoughts and beliefs we hold about ourselves, and deliberately training new ones. If you’d like to try it, Lesson One is free.
What My Grandfather Taught Me About Helping
For years I visited my grandfather at the senior citizens home. He moved there when he broke his hip and couldn’t look after himself anymore. I went about once a week, and at first I did it as the dutiful grandson, thinking of it as an obligation, but gradually, over the years, I came to enjoy these visits.
We talked about politics, sports, the weather, his life, my life. I wanted to plumb the depths of the distilled wisdom contained within a man who had lived past a hundred.
But by a hundred and seven, he hardly talked at all. I was lucky to get a sentence or two out of him. But still I came. I pushed him around in his wheelchair, took him out for some fresh air or fed him lunch, and sometimes, when I knew he was alert, I talked to him about what was happening in my life.
One day, as I sat beside him, his eyes were glazed and he showed no sign of even recognizing that I was there.
“Grampa, can you hear me?” I asked for the third or fourth time. No reply. I had brought my newly published book and wanted to read him a section where he was mentioned. He didn’t know about the passage and I wanted to surprise him with it. But now I felt I’d left it too late.
I decided to read it anyway. What did I have to lose? “Why don’t people use praise more often?” I began, quoting one of my grandfather’s favourite expressions. The passage went on to say how people respond more favourably to praise than criticism, and it was written from my grandfather’s perspective. I kept reading, unsure if he was hearing or not, but then I looked up to see him smiling, with tears in his eyes. He didn’t say anything, but I suddenly knew he was hearing every word.
Somehow sensing that this might be the last time I saw him alive, I poured out my feelings. How much he’d meant to me. What I’d learned from him. How much I loved him. I took his limp hand into mine and just sat with him in silence.
“Grampa, I’ve got to go,” I finally said, but I didn’t go. I just sat there looking at his hundred-and-seven-year-old face.
When I did leave, I thought about how much these weekly visits had meant to me as I drove away. I knew he’d heard me that day and that the reading had truly touched him. I knew it made him feel good, and this made me feel fantastic. My visit brought some joy into his life, but it brought immense joy into mine.
Stopped at a traffic light, I realized that all those years I thought I was helping him, he was helping me. I was the real beneficiary of those visits. Whatever he received, I received tenfold, and I hadn’t seen it until that moment.
He died a few days later.
