"Doing good": why you shouldn't do anything for the good of others, if you were not asked

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Helping others is a commendable exercise, but it’s important not to spoil anything.

What is meant by doing good

From childhood we are taught that helping others is the highest virtue. Indeed, this is an easy way to be useful to society, to make it a little better, and someone's life is easier.

Sometimes it happens that a person is struggling to help someone and sincerely believes that he is acting exclusively for the good. But the one to whom the help is addressed is not grateful, and moreover, he stops all communication. Because from his side, helping may not seem like a virtue at all. Here are some examples.

• Mom does not like the chosen one of her son, and she does everything to quarrel the couple. He speaks inappropriately about the girl or even comes up with gossip about her so that the guy changes his mind. She throws earrings and lipstick into his apartment so that the girl decides that he is cheating and leaves herself. Finally, it simulates heart attacks - let him see what he brought his mother to. Naturally, she acts exclusively in his interests. That he understands at 25, but his mother's heart does not lie. Then he will definitely appreciate her help!
• In a conversation between two friends, one casually mentions that he will soon be looking for a new job. The former suits, but he feels that it is time to grow. A week later, a friend calls and says that he has agreed on everything: his acquaintance is looking for an employee, an interview on Friday. And then he is offended that the good deed was not appreciated.
• The daughter wants to do physics, but the parents get into a pose: "Only through our corpses!" What will she then work as a physics teacher? And in general this is not a woman's business, let it be better for a translator. The daughter is still small and does not understand, so the issue has been resolved. He will receive a diploma, can do anything.
• At the alumni meeting, a healthy lifestyle adherent and his less "enlightened" classmate are nearby. As a result, the latter, instead of having fun, listens to a lecture all evening about how he can die if he does not change anything in his life. Moreover, the zezhnik is one hundred percent sure that he brings goodness and light.
• The girl uploads the photo to the social network and receives a comment: “Of course, you can not listen to me, but you better not wear this color and this style. If you dress differently, you will become a beauty. These things add age to you. " The sender is proud of himself, because he is now helping the poor man to get out of the abyss of ignorance.

These are slightly exaggerated, but eloquent examples, which immediately show what is wrong with doing good. There are also less obvious ones. For example, you with good intentions snatch one of the bags from someone so that it is not too heavy for him. But before that, the person carefully distributed things by weight so as to maintain balance, and your help only hinders him. Or you start to give sensible, in general, advice under the post of a friend with a problem story. But he did not ask for help, he just found the case amusing, and he shared.

To help, that is, to do good, is to promptly give advice upon request, provide a service necessary to a person, transfer a resource. It's like giving the birthday boy the gift he has always dreamed of on his birthday. In this case, he will experience gratitude in the most natural way.

To do good - to climb with unsolicited advice, impose services or think out for another person. It's like trying to give a random acquaintance a denture and a poker tied with a red ribbon, and then wonder why he refuses and is not happy.

Why you shouldn't do good

Usually, the doers of good sincerely believe that they are helping. This is not the only motivation, which we will talk about a little later. However, it really seems to them that with their advice, deed, decision, they will make someone's life better. But there is a great risk of not guessing, and here's why.

The person may not have a problem

Often there is simply nothing to save the addressee of help from. A person who does good comes up with a problem himself and begins to heroically solve it.

Let's recall the example of a healthy lifestyle adherent and his classmate. They have not seen each other for a long time and know absolutely nothing about each other. A healthy lifestyle adept sees that his friend is eating food that is harmful by his standards, and this becomes a pretext for moralizing. But the “victim” of advice itself may be perfectly fine sometimes to eat burgers, sometimes vegetables. It is possible that, according to the results of the analyzes, he will be even healthier than a zozhnik. He lives well, and his "problem" exists only in the adviser's head.

The "helper" does not know all the circumstances

The XIV Dalai Lama is credited with the following phrase: "Before condemning someone, take his shoes and walk his path." This principle works in other situations as well. Unsolicited help can not only fail to correct the situation, but also ruin everything. Even if the recipient is a very close person to you, you may not know everything.

The man himself knows what is best for him

And this "better" does not always coincide with your ideas. Of course, society has a set of universal rules. For example, stealing is discouraged in most cultures, and if no one was stealing, what would life be like! But at the level of the individual, in most cases, it is difficult to find something universally right for everyone. For example, it is bad to take away candy from a child, but if the doctor forbade him sweets, then it seems to be good.

When it comes to a person's personal choice, things are even more complicated. For example, relatives can arrange a date for a guy for a date with the daughters of his mother's friends - it's time to get married. And he decided to focus on his career, or live alone, or loves guys. What can this help cause other than irritation? Or, say, all friends advise a freelancer to quickly find a "real job" and go to the office, they even give options. From their point of view, they literally pull him out of the swamp, from him - they crawl into their own business and do not understand anything.

Man moves at his own pace

People are different, and they also have different speed of decision making. And if someone moves too slowly, it happens that his hands itch to help him. Still, as easy as you can dig!

First, a person can enjoy the process and not rush to complete the job. Secondly, he can be satisfied with the pace. He will perceive someone else's encroachments as an attempt to pull the blanket over himself, to dignify himself against his background, or to control how he copes.

Why are we in a hurry to help when we are not asked for it?

Anyone who seeks to do good can sincerely believe that he improves the life of another person and does everything only better. But the world is not entirely filled with altruists. Take charity. In one study, Russians were asked why they made a donation recently. The answer “It makes me feel good” is the fourth most popular, “It helps me get better” is the sixth. That is, quite selfish reasons to help. And this is a poll, when people could not tell the whole truth and give more publicly approved answers.

There may also be reasons for imposing help.

We confuse other people's needs with ours

For example, one person adores cats and believes that life is not the same without a cat. Therefore, he asks all his acquaintances without pets when they will have a cat, tells them stories about pussies and throws up announcements for the distribution of kittens. It simply does not occur to him that someone can live to be 35–40 years old and not want to have a cat. Definitely, his acquaintances are simply deceiving themselves: how can you not love these soft paws, this fluffy belly, not be touched by games at 4 in the morning?

In fact, our hero simply could not get a cat for a long time, but now he got it and loves it very much. And it seems to him that every person without a pet has a cat-shaped hole in their souls, which is filled with only one. But this is certainly not the case. Although when it comes to cats, one cannot speak with complete certainty - soft paws.

We try to fight our own anxiety

Often the person into whose life we "break in" is not indifferent to us. And we try to do good in order to calm our anxiety. For example, parents who impose a university to their liking on a child definitely have arguments, and they are certainly compelling. At the very least, mom and dad want the child to be able to provide for himself and live comfortably. Suppose the child still unlearns at their choice, goes to work in a profession and begins to receive a good salary. Whether he will be happy and grateful to his parents for pushing is a big question.

In the case of loved ones, it is very difficult not to interfere, but it has to be done. For example, a three-year-old mother is very anxious when a baby climbs high slides or climbs on a horizontal bar. But the choice is small: either keep him constantly near you and prevent him from developing, or let him explore the world.

We assert ourselves

It can be nice to feel better than others. Sometimes we win contests for this, sometimes we start saving someone and improving someone's life.

We're trying to get needed

Sometimes trying to participate in someone's life is an opportunity to feel important and needed. For example, old school parents are often alien to tenderness, especially in relation to adult children. Therefore, instead of saying that they love, they try to help, including where their help is not needed.

We are having trouble drawing boundaries

Remember how the state border functions: no one is allowed in or out without documents. It's about the same with personal boundaries: if a person has everything in order with them, he does not allow his own to be violated, and respects others.

But if the boundaries are blurred, then we not only do not know how to defend ours. We are exactly the same "break into" someone's life, because we do not see where ours ends and someone else's begins.

We are waiting for a sense of self-satisfaction

Let's go back to where we started: it's nice to help. Do this - and you feel like a fine fellow, who would refuse such a thing.

How to help so as not to harm

All of the above does not mean that there is no need to help at all.

Of course, you need to help - if a person needs your help and you can provide it in the form that he needs.

If suddenly outrage grows in you from this thought - “What else, let him be glad in general that I helped” - you should return to the previous section and think about what you hope to get thanks to your actions.

Let's say you see a grandmother with a cart on the street. It's light enough to roll, but hard to lift. If you decide to help an elderly woman with a cart on a flat road and leave her by the stairs, would that help be helpful? And if she needs to go down, and you lift the cart?

Before helping, ask the person if he needs help and what kind of help. The answers will make it clear whether and how to intervene. It happens that people do not know how to lean on their shoulders. But this does not mean that good should be done by force, it is better to devote more time to conversations.

And also ask yourself questions: I am really asked for help, am I making this up? Can I help the way I'm asked, without the “I know better” ad-libbing? And if the answers are yes, then you are probably doing good, not causing.