The Happiness of Helping Poor People
This week, I am making a case for the happiness of helping poor people.
In the first place, the way that most of us feel about helping poor people is a human emotion, not a “good deed. Maybe we try to intervene or serve as a mediator, and we try to make the poor feel that we care about them by telling them they are beautiful.
This week, I am making a case for the happiness of helping poor people. It is not an easy lesson to learn, but it is a lesson that is certainly worth learning, and the deeper we can understand how to live and work in harmony with those who are less fortunate than ourselves, the happier we will all be.
In the first place, the way that most of us feel about helping poor people is a human emotion, not a “good deed.” True, “doing the right thing” is always more enjoyable than doing a “wrong thing,” and the desire to help others leads us to commit a special kind of “doing the wrong thing” in most circumstances. But an emotion of compassion alone does not make our motivation motivated, and if we allow our compassion to rob us of our motivation, we will not be acting on the good impulses we have inside.
It is a great tragedy that most of us seem to want to save face by doing something wrong to someone else. Many of us worry that what we might say or do to the poor will be interpreted as an act of disloyalty, or perhaps even as a violation of etiquette. We simply cannot bear the thought of offending anyone in this manner.
If we admit that our compassion leads us to do or say things that we later regret, we begin to appreciate how important the truth is. We are much better off when we stop pretending to be what we are not, when we stop lying about who we are and why we do what we do.
To be a true friend, we need to take an honest look at our motives. One of the most important reasons why we should not be selfish is that we are more likely to work together for the greater good.
The good news is that we do not have to choose between being generous and being helpful. There is no need to put people through an emotional torture to try to win their approval, because there is no need to be feared.
Many of us feel too intimidated to go into the poorest neighborhoods or to deal directly with the poor, and so we try to help in other ways. Maybe we try to intervene or serve as a mediator, and we try to make the poor feel that we care about them by telling them they are beautiful.
But the truth is that we cannot be the center of attention for the poor, because we cannot be made to feel the way we feel. We can feel it by simply being in the place where the poor lives and working alongside them, because in the first place we cannot make them feel that we care, and we mustn’t pretend that we care about them.
One of the worst things we can do for the poor people we see is to make them believe that we are perfect, and we are not willing to admit that we may be very flawed, just like everyone else. If we do not deserve the anger and frustration we often show them, then we must learn to show compassion and let them know that we sincerely wish them well.
The best way to demonstrate this kind of compassion is by sharing our stories of others. We should not come across as “emotional” when we share our stories, because the more we have experienced in life the harder it is to talk about things that are painful, ugly, and even ugly.
Some of us are afraid to let the “ugly” out so that others can see that we are not afraid to tell the truth. But if we are nice and polite to the poor people, and we tell them that we are glad they came to us when they needed help, we will make many friends in that community.
We can start a very sad fact by helping those who have been down and out, and who are on the brink of going hungry. In our heart of hearts, we know that this is something good. and that the happiness of helping poor people is a reward for our ability to recognize beauty in the world.
