Do you need to help people? Is it worth helping people?

My mother taught me not to give too much advice or try to help someone unless the person asks for it. I always thought that she was out of harm. But as I grew up, I realized that my mother was right after all. And yes, she is one of the kindest and warmest people I have ever known.

Society says that you need to help people. I agree with that. It is believed that we should unconditionally strive to help others, and even when they do not expect it. No, everything is right here, sudden acts of kindness can sometimes change lives. However, the coin has two sides. And you should know what such philanthropy can turn into.

Of course, not everything is so sad, but not so rosy either. There is good in bad, and there is bad in good. While helping people isn't the worst idea, it's still not the best. There are three instances in which I personally tend to refuse to help, and I strongly encourage you to do the same.

Don't help people who don't deserve your help

It's not that simple. We have been taught all our lives to help others, but now forget about it.

When you grow up, you will understand that you have only two hands: one is for helping yourself, the other is for helping others.

Sam Levenson

These guys don't understand that I have a family to feed, bills to pay, urgent things to deal with on time. They don't realize that I'll have to make up for the time spent talking to them by staying up late at work. Since they do not value my time, then I am not going to waste it on them.

If people don't care about you, you don't have to help them. They just don't deserve it.

Now I'm just saying how much an hour of my time is worth. Severely, yes, but life has become easier, and I am happier. People take me much more seriously. If my services seem too expensive to someone, I offer other ways to compensate for the time spent.

Rule 1: Never offer anything for free.

Rule 2. Never forget rule 1.

People will always try to exploit you if you let them. You don't have time to help everyone. Support only those who truly deserve it.

Don't help people who can't appreciate your help.

My biggest weakness is that I really like to help. I support people whether they asked for it or not. This approach can sometimes backfire in the most unexpected way.

One of my clients was doing very badly. My team and I killed a few days to study the data with trends and understand what the problem is. This was not part of our assignment, and therefore was not included in the bill, we just sincerely worried about the success of the client. My team uncovered some serious problems with his business model and strategy. We told him about it, and he fired us.

We have done work beyond the scope of duty, just out of empathy. We told the client things that he did not want to hear from us. We lost a client because we were trying to help. Finally, now he hates us simply because we voiced our professional opinion.

A sure way to turn a friend into a fierce enemy is to tell him something that he does not want to hear.

I stopped helping people who don't want to. Minimum drama, maximum time for yourself.

Don't help if you can't do it well

Here is the most important thing. Offering support when you are not really ready to give it is not immediately. NO. I have done this several times and still regret it.

One day my father and mother were going abroad and asked me to look after their house. I had no idea how to water the flowers. Some I flooded, and some I dried out. When the parents returned a month later, all their plants had already died. If I had not offered my help, there would have been someone knowledgeable in this, and my dad's precious flowers would have been alive to this day. By the way, my parents forbade me from even touching the plants with my finger.

If you want to help without the skills or time, your help will be of no use.

Finally, everything can be good or bad. It is important for us to find a balance between these extremes. Evaluate everything carefully before lending a helping hand. If you don’t do this, you will waste your time and money, and even endanger important relationship, personal or professional.

A random act of kindness can change someone's life, or it can break it. If you help the wrong people, you will miss the chance to support people who really deserve it. Think before you help.

Before, it seemed to me that help should be provided to everyone and always, literally turn people into happiness. And I was very upset when my brilliant smart advice and articles turned out to be unclaimed and not applied in life.

In especially difficult periods, I began to hate ungrateful people who did not understand what gift and light I bring to them. I vowed to do anything for others. But nothing good came from this hatred. Over time, I let go, and I began to write again.

Sometimes I received words of gratitude, they came to me warm feedback and that gave me peace for a while.

But I was always worried about the question - why do people not take help, which is so generously and freely distributed?

It would seem, eat - I don’t want to, why don’t you eat, huh? For you, bastard, I try. For you to be happy and successful.

And then I understood everything.

Five years ago, I attended a seminar that provided an opportunity to get answers to exciting questions. To do this, I had to fill out a questionnaire and send it to the master. I was promised to answer and give recommendations for life.

I filled out the form and waited. I waited and waited, but there was no answer. I was overwhelmed with anger and indignation - how it was that I was so deceived. I shared my thoughts with a person who had been to this master's seminar many times. And he told me: “Masha, there is no request for help in your voice.” I was surprised: “How is it not?”. And he answered me something like: “You yourself are your own question. You need to be in a state of questioning, not of receiving an answer.”

I didn't immediately understand what that meant. But if a person who simply attended the seminars heard this, then the master certainly understood everything.

A little more indignant, I accepted it as the truth. Something inside told me that it was.

And after some time it really became very difficult for me, and at that moment I realized what a true request for help is. I wrote to the master, asked my question, and he answered me.

I came out of that situation with an understanding: as long as a person is not ready to hear an answer, as long as he does not crave help, he will never be able to take it in full measure.

Any help would be like eating into a full stomach. Something may come in, but, in principle, you need to be prepared for a person to vomit.

I want to tell you two parables.

The first is about a dog on a nail:

One day a man was walking past a house and saw an old woman in a rocking chair, next to her an old man was swinging in a chair reading a newspaper, and between them on the porch a dog was lying and whining, as if in pain.

Passing by, the man wondered to himself why the dog was whining. The next day he again walked past this house. He saw an elderly couple in rocking chairs and a dog lying between them, making the same mournful sound.

The puzzled man promised himself that if the dog whined tomorrow, he would ask the elderly couple about it. On the third day, to his misfortune, he saw the same scene: the old woman was rocking in her chair, the old man was reading a newspaper, and the dog was whining plaintively in his place. He couldn't take it anymore.

Excuse me, ma'am, - he turned to the old woman, - what happened to your dog?

With her? she asked. - She lies on a nail.

Confused by her answer, the man asked:

If she's on a nail and it hurts, why doesn't she just get up?

The old woman smiled and said in a friendly, affectionate voice:

So, my dear, she hurts enough to whine, but not enough to move.

The second parable is about a teacher and a student who came for advice on how to learn the wisdom of life. In response to this question, the teacher took the student and put his head in a bucket of water. He kept him there until the student began to break free. When the student asked what it was, the teacher said, "How much did you want air when you were there?" The student replied that he really wanted to and that was the only thing he could think of. And the teacher said: "When you want to know the wisdom of life, just like now the air, you will know it."

I discovered several truths for myself.

A lot of times people don't need help. It hurts them to whine about it, but not enough to do something about it.

1. They surf the Internet for advice and ideas, absorb tons of information every day, consume everything from pink quotes to philosophical reflections on happiness and life.

But they don't have to REALLY solve their problem.

Yes, there are some problems, in general. But they are tolerant. That is, they do not complicate life so much as to get up off the nail and think only about how to find a solution.

Not to mention that the most effective advice can be very unpleasant to follow. For example, take responsibility for your life only on yourself and stop pushing the blame on others.

Why is it so difficult, I'd rather find something easier. For example - how to raise feminine energy shopping. Simple, effective, joyful.

Thinking about life, doing some exercises is not good ... You need to quickly and easily.

It is better to anesthetize than to operate. It is better to stick a patch than to do a rinse.

2. Helping by force, you deprive people of independence, choice, prevent them from taking responsibility for their lives.

Everyone should make help their personal choice.

There are people who constantly hint that they need help. At the same time, they are not ready to do anything for themselves. If you have an inner need to help, you rush to the rescue. But since you don’t need help, but only attention, then everything starts here: “Why are you climbing into my life, I didn’t ask you for anything, I did as you said, and look how terrible everything is now, it’s It's all your fault..."

Such people do not know how to be adults. They don't know how to ask for help. They feel it is below their dignity. Therefore, they will do everything so that others begin to offer this help. Because in this case, you can safely refuse, kick back, make an arrogant face and say that you all decided for me here, but I didn’t need it at all. And I didn't ask for anything.

The position of a victim of circumstances and a fool is very insidious. And very manipulative. It has a lot of strength and power. Much more than meets the eye.

To illustrate the principle of non-intervention, I again remembered the parable. It's about a man who wanted to help a butterfly get out of its cocoon. He saw how difficult it was for her to get out of it and therefore opened it with a knife. But when the butterfly was in the light, its wings were not able to fly. They would be like that if she could make her way through the cocoon on her own and get stronger with the effort. And so she was left with underdeveloped wings and no longer flew.

People develop through overcoming. So create them comfortable conditions means to make them weaker. If they need help, let them learn to ask for it. There is nothing noble in being above asking for help. This is some kind of narcissistic construction, and it certainly should not be something very sublime and holy.

3. People get a lot more value without solving their problems.

This is called secondary benefit.

No matter how difficult a person is in, if he does nothing to get out of there, then he has some kind of secondary benefit: not to grow, not to change, receive bonuses, remain infantile, etc.

There are hundreds of stories of sick people who don't get better just because they stop getting attention when they get healthy. Up to the fact that families are preserved only as long as someone is sick. After all, you can not leave a sick person. And the patient is happy to try - to get sick.

You come to such a person with a sincere motive to help recover and get sabotage and aggression in response.

He doesn't need to be treated. He needs to stay sick.

4. Each person has his own path, his own karma, everyone receives exactly as much as he earned by his actions.

When I wish someone help, I think that they need it to alleviate their condition. But how can I know the whole task of his fate? How can I decide for God (the universe, the soul) that this is exactly what is necessary for this or that person. Everyone has his own path. And I know that many of my conclusions and wisdom (if you can call it that) came to me only because I sat in my sorrows until I figured everything out myself. And to understand the forces appeared only when I had sat enough. This is also called "push off the bottom." Recovery begins when it is completely unbearable. And not when it seems like OK.

5. Each person has their own neuroses, values ​​and views.

If a Vedic woman a success specialist starts to help, then there will be a conflict. Although each of them is sure that their path is true and correct.

Therefore, before offering help, it would be good to understand whether it will conflict with what is already there.

Accept that another person's vision of life can be very different from yours.

All these truths are true for the vast majority of people. And I am the same. There are questions that scream for a solution, then I give it my full attention. And there are questions that hang in the background.

Of course, it would be nice if they somehow decided, but in general, I will not strain much to solve them.

Today I am glad that at that seminar the master did not play along with me in my manipulative game “do me well, but I’m kind of out of business”.

There is nothing shameful in asking for help. If I need her, I go for her. It wasn't easy at first. But now I'm much more comfortable saying exactly what I need. I expect the same from others.

Therefore, I decided for myself that I would help only if they asked me about it. And not in half hints, saying: “Oh, something has a headache,” in the hope that I myself will rush to find out what and how, but specifically: “Have pity on me, support me, calm me down,” etc.

You need to learn to recognize your needs, and be able to voice requests.

I don't think anymore and I don't try to guess. I ask, "How exactly can I help you?" — and don't play the game "Guess what I'm offended by."

But the study of the issue of assistance by this side alone did not end for me.

Because if there are those who are helped, then there are those who help. And in this situation, no less depends on them than on those who ask.

When I "help" I assume that the other person REALLY needs my help.

And most importantly, I think that I know WHAT he needs.

But this is far from being the case.

Recently one kind person wanted to "help" me, trying to make me a better person. But for me it was not a help, but an impact.

So I replied that I would decide for myself whether I wanted to be better or not.

Help, even from the best of intentions, can be an illusion.

And sometimes banal violence.

What motives drive "helpers"?

Far from always clean and bright.

1. Suppose the helper sincerely believes that he knows what will be best for the other.

Sometimes this is true, and sometimes not. Before offering something better, it would be good to find out if the other is ready for this better?

Often not ready. Why? See the first five points.

2. The helper tries to assert himself at the expense of another, to satisfy his needs.

Such assistance is especially painful. It comes either through criticism wrapped in caring: “You're a terrible cook. I tell you this so that you change your mind and become a better hostess, ”or through passive aggression:“ Something you look bad. Let me give you the number of my beautician? ”, Or pursues selfish interests:“ I want to help you discover your femininity, so you should sleep with me.

3. The Helper wants to raise his own value for himself and for others.

Such people feel very, very noble, bringing light, knowledge and joy to others. When they "help" they feel like saints on a great mission. They gain self-conceit, the halo begins to glow brighter. After all, it is very important and beautiful - to enlighten the ignorant, to make the blind sighted and the disabled healthy.

Unfortunately, this often happens with representatives of helping professions - trainers, coaches, psychologists. They get stuck in their professional identity. They feel alive as long as they help. In their posts on social networks, they constantly talk about how happy they are to live and help people, that their work is the best, that they are not. more joy than to wake up in the morning and come up with another program to bring dark humanity to a brighter future.

It's cool at first. It invigorates and makes you so cool, and the world - bright and smiling. Plus, it seems: since you have been given a magnificent tool that you now know how to handle, then you need to try to fix everyone with this tool. Otherwise, why study?

I was the same. When I first started studying Gestalt Therapy, I was so excited about the possibilities that opened up before me. I went around and told everyone that you need to live as consciously and sincerely as possible, that you need to understand everything about yourself, poke around in your projections and introjects, unfold retroflection, etc.

It is good that life did not give me the opportunity to rest on the laurels of this knowledge. If at that moment I had hundreds of followers, the crown would have grown tightly to the skull, and there would have been no chance to see something different from the chosen point of view.

I hid these thoughts from myself for a long time. Until I realized I wasn't the only one. What kind of problem is faced a large number of helping. They suffer in the same way from the fact that they are not loved, not accepted, not appreciated, not carried in their arms.

When people provide help, they do it primarily for themselves.

I realized that the importance of external recognition was necessary to me because I did not feel my own importance for myself. Helping others made me feel like I was nothing at all.

It took a long time before I found a way out of this trap. I realized that helping others is not at all about holiness, chosenness and singularity, and the recognition of others no longer affects my sense of self.

It's easy to live when you change other people's lives. It is hard to live an ordinary worldly life without gratitude and worship.

Therefore, first of all, helpers need to deal with these issues:

Who are you without your help to others?
What will happen to you if you have no one left who needs your help and your bright thoughts?
Self-irony helps very well in working with holiness and the crown. As soon as I begin to feel that a star is on the way, I bring myself back to reality.

Now I don't help anyone. Training and therapy is my job. But now I do not expect that everyone will need it and that everyone will appreciate it. This gives me freedom, I am no longer a hostage to my own expectations. As they say, "do not wake the sleeping, help the awakened."

Everyone makes his own choice: to help or not to help, to ask for help or not to ask for help. The main thing is to be as honest with yourself as possible.

If you are a helper, ask yourself these questions:

Why are you helping?
Who are you helping?
If you are someone who needs help, ask yourself:

Are you ready to ask for help?
Are you ready to receive help?
No one can be helped by force, no one can be saved without his knowledge. Each person goes his own way. And if along the way he finds someone or something useful, he will choose to be around for a while. And then it will continue on its way again. And if you want to help, then offer, but do not insist.

And finally, the classic that not always obvious help is what you need.

“Why do we want to force all our loved ones to go to church, pray, take communion? From unbelief, because we forget that God wants the same. We forget that God wants every person to be saved and cares about everyone. It seems to us ... that something depends on us, on our efforts, and we begin to convince, tell, explain, and only make it worse, because it is possible to attract to the Kingdom of Heaven only by the Holy Spirit ... We violate the precious gift that is given to man— the gift of freedom. By our claims, by the fact that we want to remake everyone in our own image and likeness, and not in the image of God, we claim the freedom of others, and we try to make everyone think the way we think ourselves, but this is impossible. Truth can be revealed to a person if he asks about it, if he wants to know it, but we constantly impose it. There is no humility in this act, and if there is no humility, then there is no grace of the Holy Spirit. And without grace, there will be no result; rather, it will be, but the opposite.

The questions were followed by a whole list of "diagnoses", in other words, claims against these most stubborn neighbors: pride; self-confidence; fear of parting with imaginary freedom; bad conscience and unconscious resistance to repentance; inertia, passivity, lack of will; Finally, just laziness.

My brakes, however, worked: I could not help but see that my stubborn ones, for the most part, were no more stupid and, at least, no worse than me. And as a maximum, noticeably better.

Gradually, I realized that a seemingly sincere desire to bring your neighbor to Orthodoxy is a very insidious thing in fact. It very easily leads us into the temptation of condemnation, and at the same time - arrogance and complacency. Arguing about why one person comes to the Church and another does not, being carried away by these arguments, we do not even notice how we are slipping. Once a thought came into my head that seemed wonderful: “If a person really seeks the truth, if he is truly honest with himself, he, even if not immediately, even after some search, will still come to Orthodoxy.” But after this thought came the sobering question: what does it turn out to be? It means that I am honest with myself, but that person over there, now deceased, who never came to the Church, was dishonest? Are we really allowed to judge this at all?

This is actually a mystery: why one person becomes a believer and clearly defines his religion, another chooses "enlightened" agnosticism, and the third declares that, firstly, there is no God, and secondly, if there is, which of this?.. This divergence of our paths is not due to any differences in characters, moral codes or intellectual levels. Before the secret you need to humble yourself. Humble yourself and stop torturing yourself with endless “Why?..” The Lord knows why and why.

This is on the one hand. On the other hand, faith is not a version. If we are Christians, it means that we profess the faith, and do not use in our spiritual interests the version, purely subjectively chosen by us from many others: “This, perhaps, is to my liking.” After all, this is exactly what they want from us - so that, as they say, we do not claim the truth in the final instance: “Please go to your Orthodox Church but do not think that those who do not walk in it are wrong.” At the same time, it is assumed that the truth, as it were, does not exist, in any case, it is not known to anyone, therefore no one should claim to possess it. “The only thing that can and should be insisted on, they usually say in such discussions, is that all possible worldviews, except, of course, destructive and socially dangerous ones, have equal right into existence"

They really have the right - both in the legal sense and in the moral sense, and the Church has never encroached on this right. But it does not follow from this that we should not, firstly, perceive our faith as true faith (otherwise it is impossible!), secondly, protect it from false judgments and interpretations, and thirdly, tell others about it - then have to be her missionaries. If we cannot or do not consider ourselves entitled to do this, then we are like salt that has lost its strength (cf. Matt. 5 , 13). It's just that here you need to see the golden mean, in other words, to develop a norm of behavior.

“So, do you go to church? When in last time confessed? Never?! Well, listen, it won’t work like that!..” is aggression, it is an attempt to grab a person by the hand and drag him into the temple by force (the phrase “I won’t drag him!” is quite common in such cases!).

But if we hear from our neighbor something like: “God must be in the soul, why all these rituals?” We must be able to answer. Tactfully, not attacking, not humiliating - but firmly and confidently, so that a person feels trust in our words and interest in them. And, of course, briefly, because a long speech is a violation of the attention of the interlocutor. Sometimes it’s enough to say: “Yes, I once thought so myself.” At the same time, you will remember that you yourself were like that, and you will cool off.

Of course, I know all this purely theoretically, but in practice, behave in similar situations I almost can't. It's hard to learn. Why? Is it because we have little love? “You can’t teach people, they need to be fed physically and spiritually,” wrote the great Christian of the godless era Sergei Fudel. But we are not concerned with supporting a person, in order to help him, but with correcting him. So that he does not spoil the weather for us and does not cause mental discomfort. We see the mistakes and delusions of our neighbors, but we do not see those troubles, those diseases, the symptoms of which these mistakes are in fact. A man says that he does not trust "these priests" - we are indignant at his injustice and do not think that this man has not trusted anyone for some time now. He is afraid to trust, he is already arming himself with distrust in advance - against everyone and everything, and especially against those whom he would really like to trust in reality. Try to cure him of this disease! This is much more difficult than resenting his wrongness and bombarding him with angry counterarguments.

Love does not need to be taught, it initially knows everything that it needs. And we are inept from dislike, from self-centeredness. As Father Demetrius says (see the beginning), we want to remake everyone in our own image, and not in the image of God.

We should calm down. Stop being nervous because of someone else's stubbornness and unreason. Because this nervousness is from what the sermon quoted at the beginning is dedicated to, namely, from lack of faith. We don’t believe much ourselves, but we want others to light up from our faith, like from fire… But in general, it’s necessary that they light up.

My mother taught me not to give too much advice or try to help someone unless the person asks for it. I always thought that she was out of harm. But as I grew up, I realized that my mother was right after all. And yes, she is one of the kindest and warmest people I have ever known.

Society says that you need to help people. I agree with that. It is believed that we should unconditionally strive to help others, and even when they do not expect it. No, everything is right here, sudden acts of kindness can sometimes change lives. However, the coin has two sides. And you should know what such philanthropy can turn into.

Of course, not everything is so sad, but not so rosy either. There is good in bad, and there is bad in good. While helping people isn't the worst idea, it's still not the best. There are three instances in which I personally tend to refuse to help, and I strongly encourage you to do the same.

Don't help people who don't deserve your help

It's not that simple. We have been taught all our lives to help others, but now forget about it.

When you grow up, you will understand that you have only two hands: one is for helping yourself, the other is for helping others.

Sam Levenson

These guys don't understand that I have a family to feed, bills to pay, urgent things to deal with on time. They don't realize that I'll have to make up for the time spent talking to them by staying up late at work. Since they do not value my time, then I am not going to waste it on them.

If people don't care about you, you don't have to help them. They just don't deserve it.

Now I'm just saying how much an hour of my time is worth. Severely, yes, but life has become easier, and I am happier. People take me much more seriously. If my services seem too expensive to someone, I offer other ways to compensate for the time spent.

Rule 1: Never offer anything for free.

Rule 2. Never forget rule 1.

People will always try to exploit you if you let them. You don't have time to help everyone. Support only those who truly deserve it.

Don't help people who can't appreciate your help.

My biggest weakness is that I really like to help. I support people whether they asked for it or not. This approach can sometimes backfire in the most unexpected way.

One of my clients was doing very badly. My team and I killed a few days to study the data with trends and understand what the problem is. This was not part of our assignment, and therefore was not included in the bill, we just sincerely worried about the success of the client. My team uncovered some serious problems with his business model and strategy. We told him about it, and he fired us.

We have done work beyond the scope of duty, just out of empathy. We told the client things that he did not want to hear from us. We lost a client because we were trying to help. Finally, now he hates us simply because we voiced our professional opinion.

A sure way to turn a friend into a fierce enemy is to tell him something that he does not want to hear.

I stopped helping people who don't want to. Minimum drama, maximum time for yourself.

Don't help if you can't do it well

Here is the most important thing. Offering support when you are not really ready to give it is not immediately. NO. I have done this several times and still regret it.

One day my father and mother were going abroad and asked me to look after their house. I had no idea how to water the flowers. Some I flooded, and some I dried out. When the parents returned a month later, all their plants had already died. If I had not offered my help, there would have been someone knowledgeable in this, and my dad's precious flowers would have been alive to this day. By the way, my parents forbade me from even touching the plants with my finger.

If you want to help without the skills or time, your help will be of no use.

Finally, everything can be good or bad. It is important for us to find a balance between these extremes. Evaluate everything carefully before lending a helping hand. If you don't, you're wasting your time and money, and endangering important relationships, whether personal or professional.

A random act of kindness can change someone's life, or it can break it. If you help the wrong people, you will miss the chance to support people who really deserve it. Think before you help.

François de La Rochefoucauld

Should people be helped? I am sure, at least once in your life, many of you have asked this question, and for good reason. After all, on the one hand, deep inside ourselves, we feel the need to help someone with something when we have such an opportunity, and on the other, our life experience often shows us that helping other people is not only unprofitable, but even dangerous in some cases. And although we do not always realize how beneficial or disadvantageous it is for us to actually help someone in a given situation, we are nevertheless afraid to do this, because we know that many people tend to abuse someone else's help and trust . There are those among us who do not understand at all - why help someone when you can and should take care only of yourself, including at the expense of other people. Helping people seems to be a very stupid thing, especially since it is also ungrateful in most cases. That's why some of us never help anyone. But the fact is that the tendency to help other people is inherent in us by nature. And it is laid in us in order to make our species more tenacious. Without each other's help, we would all have died out long ago. In this article, dear readers, I will tell you why you need to help other people, in what situations you need to do it, and most importantly, how you need to help people in order to really help, and not harm them and yourself.

Pay attention, no matter how selfish many people are - even they sometimes help someone with something, albeit in small ways, but they help. And even despite those situations when people are deliberately set against each other, when they indulge their egoism and even bring it up in them, people still help each other, even the most insignificant. True, there are people who never help anyone, in any case, we do not notice this in them. But such people are few, they are still more of an exception. At the same time, our desire to help other people does not contradict our egoism, because by helping others we can help ourselves at the same time, but often we do not realize this. Man is a social being, he cannot live without other people. We are all dependent on the people around us in one way or another. And since we depend on each other, it means that we need each other, and since we need each other, we must help each other, we must take care of each other. Actually, people have always done it, but we all have different opportunities. Some take care of their family, others take care of whole country and even all of humanity. But there are those among us who are not even able to take care of themselves. Thus, we see that people are interested in helping each other. But at the same time, many of us still doubt the need to help other people. Let's find out why.

In one famous cartoon [Cheburashka] there is a song with the following words: “He who helps people wastes time in vain. You can’t become famous for good deeds ... ”And you know what, Dear friends, some people are firmly convinced of the truth of these words. They adhere to just such a position in life - they do not want to help anyone. But is it really so? Are we wasting time when we help someone, and don't our good deeds lead us to anything good? Maybe the whole point is that we do not know what kind of help to other people should be and what things can really be called good? I think that's exactly the point.

Think about what would happen if, as a child, you were surrounded by people who were extremely hostile to you, ready to take advantage of your weakness and completely unwilling to help you. You probably wouldn't have survived. Although that means, probably - you definitely would not have survived. So we've all been helped once because we've survived and grown and learned something because we can now take care of ourselves. But even as adults, most of us are faced with the help of other people, we just do not always notice it. You will not say that all the people around you have never done anything good for you, never helped you in any way. Something, I am sure, they have done and are doing for you, even if not always and not entirely unselfishly, but in any case not for money. We quite often unconsciously help each other, not always correctly, not always disinterestedly, it’s just that self-interest is different and there is nothing wrong with it, but we need to live somehow, take care of ourselves somehow, it’s not always good to do good deeds for free, without any personal gain. But the main thing that we do is we help each other. And we need to notice this help in order to understand how important it is for us. Then a person’s tongue will not rise to say that helping people is an absolutely useless thing, on which we waste our time.

But, I repeat, you need to be able to help people. You see, what you consider help and a good deed in a given situation is not always perceived as help and a good deed by another person, by other people. Someone can and should be helped with advice, someone with a deed, and someone with a stick, if the person does not understand anything else. So help can be different. Therefore, before helping someone, you need to find out what kind of help this or that person needs. Take, for example, children - are they able to understand an adult who limits them in many ways, forces them to study and does not allow them to do whatever they want? It is quite obvious that the position of adults is not fully understood by children, and sometimes not at all, if adults communicate little with them and do not explain anything to them. Therefore, sometimes you have to resort to a belt and help children become normal people who are able to take care of themselves, able to integrate into society and adapt in it, contrary to their desires and even with their self-hatred. In other words, our help to children is not always perceived by them as help, and sometimes they are not only not grateful to us for it, but also hate us for our help to them. But this does not mean that we should not take care of our children, should not help them, right? And we must help them - correctly, and not in the way they want it.

Not only children can be ungrateful, but, as we all know, adults too. Many people, yes there are many, the vast majority of people do not like it when, say, they are told the truth, the very truth that, on the one hand, is able to help them, and on the other, different reasons ignored by them. This often happens in life. I am telling you this as a psychologist. Some people turn to psychologists for help and when he finds the cause of their problem, they refuse this help. People do not want to be treated, they do not want to accept help, they do not want to know the truth about their problem - they run away from it because they are afraid of it. Of course, all these fears can be overcome, and professionals bypass them. But sometimes, you just don’t know how ready a person is for what you tell him. And sometimes, unfortunately, your desire to help a person in the simplest and most obvious way only harms working with him, because he is not only not ready, but also does not want to be helped. But, does it follow from this that it is not necessary to help people? Of course not. Especially if this is your professional duty. One must do one's work conscientiously so as not to sow the seeds of chaos and distrust around oneself, from which most of our troubles grow. It's just that many people are very weak - life has made them so, and they are not ready to accept this or that help. This must be taken into account - and help people correctly, taking into account their personality traits. For the right help, most people will definitely thank you, and when necessary, they themselves will help you, to the best of their ability. Therefore, the point is not that it is not necessary to help people, due to the fact that they do not always respond to kindness with kindness, but how exactly this should be done. But there is no doubt that this must be done. After all, the more united and friendly people will be, helping each other in difficult situations, the easier, more fun and better their life will be.

I also want to say that one should not expect gratitude from other people for their help - this is not a product that can and should be bargained for. We help each other in order to live well together, and not to ask each other for our good deeds. Are you going to present a bill to a person for telling him how to get to the library? Or maybe you will bill your children for everything you have done and are doing for them? Or do we need to start giving each other not free, but paid advice, regardless of their usefulness? We probably do not need all this, since such a life will not benefit any of us. Of course, some types of help deserve special thanks. For example, we cannot work for each other for free or give each other on parole large sums money, or cooperate with each other without any contracts, since our human nature, unfortunately, does not allow us to do this. Therefore, there are money, contracts, laws, rules, all kinds of obligations, and so on. But you know what, dear friends, no money and no laws, no matter how harsh they may be, will force a person to conscientiously fulfill his obligations to other people and thus help them. Therefore, the same money does not always stimulate people well enough, since people like to receive big money, but they do not want to work for them. If, for example, we overpay employees by paying them undeservedly high wages, they will simply stop working, because they will feel that, in popular terms, a freebie has gone. Therefore, high wage where it should not be - this is not helping people - this is evil.

And the same thing with violence - it also does not lead to good. You can force a person to do something for you, but this work will be of poor quality, and the person himself will hate you and will rebel against you at the first opportunity. Therefore, people should want to do good deeds for each other, even if not disinterestedly, when this is impossible, but from the heart. And such a desire can only be aroused in them with the help of proper education and upbringing, when each person begins to understand how his life depends on other people and how the life of the society in which he lives depends on him and his actions. In other words, it is necessary to explain cause-and-effect relationships to people in order to develop their systems thinking. And then, they will understand what the Buddha meant when he said that just as an individual element supports the system, so the system supports the individual element. And thanks to this understanding, most people will want to help each other, because they will see that it is beneficial for them to do so. After all, no matter how many people there are in this world, one by one they can all be overcome, subjugated, used. But when they are a mountain for each other, when they support each other and help each other, it is very difficult to cope with them, and sometimes it is completely impossible. Therefore, any power always - divides people and because of this rules over them. Without dividing people and pitting them against each other, the minority would never be able to subdue the majority.

We also need to understand that before we start helping other people, we need to learn how to help ourselves. It is clear that help can be different, someone is able to help in a big way, someone in small things, depending on their capabilities. We can all be of some help to each other. But still, in some cases, in order to help people correctly, you must first help yourself. A person must be morally mature to help other people. And before this maturation, he needs to take care mainly of himself and not take responsibility for other people. No wonder children are so selfish, their selfishness helps them take care of themselves, it helps them survive. Children cannot take care of anyone because they have not yet learned to take care of themselves. And help from them, if it can be, is very insignificant, because they themselves still need the help of adults. And adults, those who, as they say, are morally and intellectually mature, no longer have such a selfish approach to life, because they are able to take care not only of themselves, but also of other people, in particular, their own and even other people's children. . Selfishness, in its most ugly form, is inherent in weak people who do not know how to properly take care of themselves, so they row for themselves, because this form of behavior is necessary for them to survive. Only in our society, with its rules and laws, in order to help yourself it is more important to seem more like an altruist than an egoist. But for this, it is no longer necessary to rely on your instincts, but on your intellect. What many egoists do not know how to do, because of the immaturity of their minds. Egoists not only do not want, but also do not know how to help people, they do not know how to take care of anyone. Sometimes they are not even able to help themselves, they cannot take care of themselves. The same children, due to their underdevelopment, are not able to cope with many things on their own and cannot help themselves in many matters. How then can they help other people? Naturally, no way. This is how many conditionally adult people, in some cases, cannot help other people, because they have not learned to help themselves. Therefore, before you start doing good deeds and with their help improve as your own life, and the lives of other people - you must first develop yourself in the right way, that is, first you need to help yourself. Otherwise, wanting to do what is best, you will only make things worse, both for yourself and for other people.

You and I, of course, try to stay away from such people, since no one is pleased when they try to use him or even take him for a fool, but at the same time we ourselves do such stupid things that look like help, but in reality are evil. For example, you cannot give money to some beggars, for whom begging is not a way of survival, but a business, and a very bad, dirty business, because of which, for example, babies suffer, who are used to pity people. And when we give money to those who do not need to give it, we do not help people, but create and spread evil. Another example, also very common, is the help of some parents to their children, when parents do everything for their children, thus preventing them from learning to take care of themselves. As a result, such children grow up - selfish, cynical, spoiled, dependent, unadapted to life people. As a result, a seemingly good deed leads to the opposite result. The best help to a person, in my opinion, is help with advice. Moreover, advice can be free, and the benefits from it are enormous.

Thus, helping people is not a meaningless activity that is not worth wasting time and effort on - it is a useful desire for all of us to make our lives better. When we help others, we often help ourselves. You just need to understand what kind of help to other people should be or specific person in a given situation to be useful. People are different, situations are also different, so help cannot always be the same for everyone. Help must be competent, appropriate, timely and in demand, only then it will benefit everyone, both those we help and ourselves. Therefore, do not listen to those who say that helping people is a useless and stupid occupation. That which makes us stronger and helps us as a species to survive cannot be useless stupidity.