Making Connections # 2

Selfless acts are not common in our society. It seems like as Americans, our main concern is to take care of ourselves and please ourselves. Sometimes when you feel compelled to perform a selfless act you are tricked into thinking that it is the right thing when in fact you are only serving yourself by giving yourself peace of mind. I can attest to this fact by using my real life experience of trying to always fix my family’s problems. I have always thought than when something wrong occurred and someone in my family needed help I would help purely out of my love for them, in part I was, but I also did it to make myself feel better. One day my father lost his job and it was near the time that my mother was putting together a dinner party to celebrate their twenty first anniversary, after he lost his job they decided to put it off until they were in a more secure place. When they told me the news I felt so bad because I knew that it meant so much to them and I decided that I would pay for the party and in my mind I was doing it to boost their spirits. Looking back on the experience I can recognize that I was partly paying for the party to lift their spirits but I was also doing it because it would make me feel better to see them feel a little better and enjoy themselves. Sometimes performing a selfless act can be somewhat of oxymoron, no one does anything for no good reason. When you donate money to the Red Cross, on one hand you do it to help people but you also donate to make yourself feel less guilty when you see than a natural disaster has occurred and you have been spared for not being affected by it. In many cases people perform seemingly selfless acts for the superstitious fear that the same disaster or bout of bad fortune could happen to them. The same principle applies to situations in which you see someone on the side walk asking for money. For example, one day last month I was leaving the Wal-Mart Super Center in Palmdale and there was this old man with an oxygen tank and I thought to myself that someone like this does not deserve to spend his supposed “twilight years” begging for change, so I gave him some money and made my way home, all the while thinking how lucky I am. Reflecting on my decision to give him money when so many would pass him by made me consider why I felt the need to do it. Certainly a part of me felt bad for him but also I thought about this belief that my mother passed on to me and her mother passed on to her. It goes something like “you never know if that person is God in disguise and you wouldn’t dismiss our Lord if it was”. So obviously then a part of me did it not literally thinking it could be God but for the teachings of my faith that teach that you do not turn your back on anyone or refuse to offer them some sort of help. Brownie points aside, I gave him a few dollars because it made me feel better so it was arguably beneficial to me to help him. It isn’t wrong to help someone because you know it will make you feel better, im my book that is just a side benefit.