Our Human Desire to Help Others

We are born with a desire to help others. It seems one of the innate characteristics of human beings is a recognition and wish to help one another.

Research shows that even babies as young as eighteen months will reach out to strangers who appear sad. We see this caring in children and teenagers even when they appear to not care.

Perhaps a few million years ago, our hominid ancestors realized that we survive better if we help each other. What was certainly not in the consciousness of the stone age people, was the awareness that when we help others we bring feelings of joy and peace into our lives. Not only are those being helped benefitted but the helper is equally, perhaps more powerfully strengthened as well.

Of course the innate desire to help has nothing to do with a conscious desire to help ourselves. It seems inborn, in our DNA, a very foundational behavior in all of humankind. What is unusual is the behavior of helping just to increase one's ego.

This sense of wanting to help stems from a deep knowing that we are connected as a human family. When we bring forth the life of another we are bringing something beautiful into our universe. The more we strengthen, support, and care for each other, the more fully our universe blossoms forth into its fullness.

As we contemplate our daily lives and notice the desire we each have to help each other, perhaps we can remember that this very innate sense is that which will change the world.

There is no other way to heal our world than for each of us to make a difference.

Photo curtesy of Sarah Bain Gallery