Kindness doesn’t have to be as heavy as good deeds: it can be the smallest of words, or something unnoticed that could have been done but wasn’t.
A few years ago, my father almost died when I was barely 13 years old. He had several heart attacks, but luckily survived with a heart bypass surgery later. The weeks he was in the hospital, the months he spent at Home convalescing, the miracle drugs, the mysterious human body, there’s so much I want to say about it all. But here, I’ll just mention one little thing that happened just after he had a heart attack and was experiencing pain in his left arm.
Early that morning, my father felt something wrong in his chest, and he woke up my mother and asked her to call an ambulance. The phone was in the living room, and he stopped her as she was about to get up and leave the bedroom to make the call. Father said to call the ambulance without the siren.
A few weeks later, after the fear of death had subsided like an imperceptible tide, my mother asked about the siren. My father said faintly that he was afraid the siren would wake his three sleeping daughters and scare them. He was right, we were all light sleepers, and our farm was usually quiet because there were no neighbors close by. But the kindness of my father was simply beyond my imagination.
I think what my father did was an act of kindness. He was so thoughtful and considerate that I couldn’t understand it; he was so generous that I didn’t expect it. Years later, I still can’t imagine that in the early morning of what could have been my father’s last moments, all he could think about was not waking his sleeping daughter.
Kindness is like holding an ice cube in your hand. It’s so cold that it stings, but the coldness slowly melts away. At first you can barely hold it, but over Time, you can’t bear to let go. My father wanted to call a quiet ambulance because he had become so familiar with goodwill that the sting had long since disappeared: the ice was no longer cold, but had become one with his hands.
But this kindness, how do we cultivate it, how can we hold the ice in our hands? Stephen G. Post conducted a survey in 2005 called “Altruism, Happiness, and health: The Benefits of Being Good. ” in which he collected and analyzed a large number of studies and found that altruism not only makes us happier, but also makes us healthier.
Post cites two studies confirming that in adults altruistic behavior is positively correlated with physical health and Life satisfaction. He also cites another study that found that volunteers experienced fewer depressive symptoms and higher levels of health than the general population. Two other studies also showed that active volunteering was generally associated with lower mortality (controlling for variables such as age, gender, chronic disease, exercise intensity, health habits such as smoking and marital status).
Post writes, “For many people, altruistic behavior is one of the influencing factors that increases well-being and enhances health. As to why altruism has such a positive impact on people’s health, Post said the overall reason is that “selfless caring and kindness are the types of emotions that can replace Negative emotions (such as anger, hatred, fear), which can affect the functioning of the immune system and lead to stress-related illnesses. “
Post suggests that not only should students be taught to do good in schools, but for public health reasons, doctors should be asked to prescribe “goodness” to their patients. In this way, we can cultivate goodwill and take it to the next level. But why should we wait to be prescribed? We can reflect on ourselves.
Consider the famous author George Saunders’ commencement address at Syracuse University last year, in which he said very clearly: “My greatest regrets in life are the acts of kindness that I wanted to do but didn’t do. Saunders gave many counter-examples, recalled a missed opportunity to do good, he also told a moving story, when he was in the seventh grade, a new girl in the class “unpopular, often He could have been kinder to her, but he wasn’t. I’m sure there are many examples of this in our lives.
Kindness doesn’t have to be as heavy as an act of kindness: it can be a small word, or something you don’t notice that you could have done but didn’t.
Kindness doesn’t have to be as heavy as good deeds: it can be the smallest of words, or the unnoticed things that could have been done but weren’t. Sometimes, the kindest thing we can do is to exercise a little self-restraint: not to leave mean comments at the bottom of articles, to leave hostile tweets or tweets in the draft box, to listen quietly when we receive unfamiliar or opposing opinions.
The Internet gives us many opportunities to express our favorable opinions (like, like, share), but not many opportunities to express kindness. Perhaps the kindest behavior on the Internet is to remain quiet. It’s not about being silent all the time, it’s about learning to listen before getting angry and raging. It’s also important to understand that there are many ways to show kindness, and you don’t have to agree to do so. My father wanted to call a quiet ambulance, which was done with good intentions, but when I argued with the hospital nurse about visiting hours not long ago, my father admonished me, which was also done with good intentions.
George Saunders advises Syracuse graduates to look back on the good deeds they did and didn’t do. “Throughout your life,” he says, “doing good has There are highs and lows, and you know exactly how to approach the peaks and stay away from the lows. “
Examining where we have failed is honing in. And when we reflect on the good deeds we wanted to do but didn’t, as Saunders says, it teaches us to identify our heart’s desires. It may sound ridiculous to write a prescription for good deeds, but perhaps it is enough to examine our own successes and failures in doing good deeds.
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