Is it just me who finds it hard not to people watch while in public, simply just observe people go on about their days, doing the most mundane tasks? Or When I see someone doing a good deed for a stranger I question: do we only do good to feel better about ourselves? Or do we genuinely care about the well-being of others?
Everyone wakes up and sees someone else in the mirror and leads a completely different life of that of our own. I don’t know what it feels like to be them and they have no clue what it feels like to be me, in spite of the times we believe we could put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and live through them, we will never entirely understand what is going on in the mind of another. It’s sort of daunting but also liberating knowing how different we all are but are still civilly functioning (for the most part) in the same society, the same world, but on different scales.
My favourite thing to see is a stranger helping another stranger, expecting nothing in return but just out of the goodness of their heart. Or the small gestures of a coworker asking another coworker “I’m going to make a coffee, do you want one?”
Maybe people do it so people like me can go home and write about it and remember how “good” of a person that stranger was. Maybe if it wasnt for people watching, less people would be kind, who knows.
I was told once by someone who used to be in my life that no one does good things for others for no reason, but instead for their own selfish benefit. He said we do good to feel better about ourselves and to get that satisfaction of someone believing we are entirely good. So, with that logic that means no one would do good if it wasn’t for anyone watching? I don’t believe that.
There has been an on-going debate between scholars if humans are by default selfish or cooperative. Altruism does however exist but it is not instinct for everyone although we are wired for it. Like David Rakoff says.
“Altruism is innate, but it’s not instinctual. Everybody’s wired for it, but a switch has to be flipped.” – David Rakoff
Neuroscientists and economists at the University of Oregon, Eugene, also found that some people seem hard wired for altruism. All subjects experienced positive feelings, and had pleasure centers of their brain stimulated, after donating money to a food bank. But extremely altruistic subjects placed in magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines had brain pleasure zones light up after giving money, even more so than when receiving it. Therefore it was no surprise to see they donated twice as much money as the control subjects.
Don’t feel too bad when you see your friend donating to the church every week or volunteering in the soup kitchen, they may be hard-wired for altruism, while you are not.
Although a lot of us have different motivations for doing good and many acts of kindness may be partly or fully motivated by self-interest, at the end of the day it’s not hurting the world but instead only helping it. We helped someone else out, which helps us out, positive vibes all around.
When I started looking more into this and reading some studies I can say a feeling of sadness did overcome me at first. I thought we did kind things for people for the simple fact that they were in need of help and we didn’t want to see them struggle or whatever the case may be. I guess instinctively this is what some people do, unconsciously, not realizing that they really do it for the satisfaction they get out of it. Like I said though, it’s not hurting anyone to lend a helping hand, in fact it benefits everyone involved. Therefore, I say, help as many people as you can out there, spread the goodness and the positive vibes out into the universe and help make this world a kinder place and feel better by doing so.
Also, we should not let people put us down by telling us we are not good but simply only do good to benefit ourselves, because maybe this is something going on in our subconscious mind but most of the time we don’t even know it, some people are just wired to want to help in anyway they can. Some people would give someone their last dollar or the shirt of their back in cold weather, others wouldn’t even think about it. If you’re the former, then you should not take it to heart when people try to put you down by telling you that you are only doing it to benefit your own ego. Those people aren’t worth being around. Stay true to you and allow your kindness to spread and touch others in ways they may need, just like you’ve always done.
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