Kindness

It's been long enough now, and I figure I better write to avoid Dania's wrath.

Jeremy Stevenson, in all of his psychology classes, asks the question: is there really altruism? You see, the problem is that many times people will do nice things to others for selfish reasons. They want to help others so people will praise them. They will try to help others in order to avoid punishment. They serve because it makes them feel good. So Mr. Stevenson's question really is valid. Is there true altruism, motivated by nothing except the desire to help others, and if so, how do we know when we have performed an altruistic act?

I have been pondering this question in the back of my mind ever since he first posed it. I have always believed altruism was possible. People seem to often do nice things just because they wanted to help someone else. But with my logical mind, unless I could define when I was being altruistic in my kindness and when I was not, I could not accept the fact that altruism existed. I couldn't accept it existed without being able to explain what it was. Tonight I think I finally got an answer.

I realized tonight that there are times when I do not care who gets the credit or the thanks. Often, I profess to not care, but occasionally there are circumstances where I just do not care at all. That happened tonight, when I let a friend sleep on our couch and after she got up I received no thanks. She left without saying anything to me. Normally, that wold bother me, but tonight I simply didn't care. It was enough for me that I had shown someone a little kindness. In more extreme cases, when I am commended for such actions, I downplay their importance. I'm not talking about false humility, although I am certainly guilty of that every once in a while. I mean honestly, to your core, believing that what you have done is not a great accomplishment. When you feel that what you are doing is only what is necessary, that, I think, is when you have achieved altruism. It isn't often that I have achieved that feeling. I wish I could say it happened more often than it does. But I know I have felt it, and I now know that altruism exists and what it is, at least for me.