Many people are already tired of the selfishness and anger that reign in the world. Every day the news reports new atrocities, and they cause serious doubts about the ability of a person to show kindness and care for anyone other than himself. However, there are stories of people who, through their actions, set an example of kindness and compassion.
History of the Belogortsevs
Married couple Olga and Sergei Belogortsev do not have alarm clocks at home. Every morning they wake up to the barking of their pets. Olga hurries to prepare breakfast for them. Meanwhile, Sergei is cleaning up the yard. Four years ago, they could not even imagine that they would lead such a lifestyle.
And it all started with an accident. Sergei’s friend owed him money and decided to pay him off in a different way - he brought him a mastiff puppy named Gretta. At first, Sergei didn’t even think about leaving the dog at home. He advertised for sale and has already found buyers. The evening before the deal, Sergei went out for a walk with Gretta. Suspecting nothing, he buried himself in the phone, when suddenly a noise was heard from behind. Turning around, Sergei saw Gretta knock a man to the ground. He, mad with fear, ran away. Sergei saw a hammer on the ground: apparently, it was a robber whose dog prevented him from committing a crime and thereby saved his life. After this, of course, Sergei did not sell the dog, because it saved his life. Unfortunately, some time later Gretta died of a heart attack.
Why is the family of Sergei and Olga also an example of mercy from life? The fact is that in memory of the dog, they decided to open a shelter for four-legged animals at home with their own money. They built several enclosures in the yard. Over the course of four years, they produced about a hundred dogs, almost all of which later managed to find new owners. They treat the most exhausted animals right at home.
However, Sergei and Olga do not give away all the animals - there are also those that they decided to keep. For example, the dog Rada, whose tendons were cut. Her character is not very friendly, so the couple, not knowing how she would behave in her new home, decided to keep Rada with them. Olga is a veterinarian by profession, and Sergey is an entrepreneur. It costs about 20 thousand rubles a month to maintain a horde of pets. Now the Belogortsev family has 20 dogs. Having cured and distributed some, they recruit new ones. They dream of building larger enclosures for their pets. The first step has already been taken - the family has purchased a plot of land.
The act of the crane operator
In 2016, Tamara Pastukhova, a crane operator from St. Petersburg, provided another example from life on the topic of mercy. She heroically saved the lives of three construction workers. Risking her life, she helped them get out of the fire. The fire broke out in the evening on a section of the highway under construction. The insulation and sheathing of reinforced concrete bridge piers caught fire. total area the fire was about one hundred meters. When the fire started, the woman heard the screams of the workers - they became hostages of the fire that broke out right on scaffolding. A cradle was attached to the crane boom, and the workers were lowered to the ground. Tamara herself also had to be rescued from the fire.
How to become merciful?
It is not enough just to know examples of mercy from life. This quality can be learned. To become merciful, you need to do good deeds. The easiest way to find mercy is to be around those who need help. For example, someone may feel compassion for an old man in need of help, another for an orphan. The third will want to do good deeds for people in the hospital. Mercy is shown where there is human need. An essay about mercy and real-life examples may contain the stories described. You can also do it yourself good deeds.
An act is a certain action motivated by the inner world of a person formed at that moment. Actions can be moral and immoral. They are committed under the influence of a sense of duty, convictions, education, love, hatred, sympathy. Every society has its heroes. There is also a certain scale by which a person’s actions are assessed. According to it, it is possible to determine whether this is the act of a hero, which will serve as an example for subsequent generations.
Even ancient philosophers thought about the concept of feat. Contemporary thinkers have not escaped reflection on this topic. All human life consists of a continuous chain of actions, i.e. deeds. It often happens that a person's behavior and thoughts differ. For example, a child wishes only the best for his parents. However, their actions often upset them. We can say with confidence that our tomorrow depends on today's actions. In particular, our whole life.
Socrates' Search for the Meaning of Life
Socrates was one of the active seekers of the meaning of this concept. He was trying to figure out what a true heroic act should be. and the evil, how a person makes a choice - all this worried ancient philosopher. He penetrated into the inner world of a particular person, his essence. I was looking for a higher purpose for my actions. In his opinion, they should be motivated by the main virtue - mercy.
The basis of actions is the goal of learning to distinguish between good and evil. When a person can penetrate into the essence of these concepts, he will be able, according to Socrates, to always act courageously. Such a person will definitely perform a heroic act for the sake of the greater good. Socrates' philosophical reflections were aimed at finding such an incentive, a force that would not need recognition. In other words, the philosopher is talking about self-knowledge, when a person will have internal motivations that replace centuries-old traditions.
Sophists vs Socrates
The philosophy of Socrates tried to explain the essence of the concept of “action”: what is it? The motivating component of his action is the opposite of the position of the sophists, who teach to find out their hidden motives, giving them the status of conscious ones. According to Protagoras, who was a contemporary of Socrates, as an individual it is a clear and successful expression with the ultimate satisfaction of personal desires and needs.
The Sophists believed that every action of a selfish motive must be justified in the eyes of relatives and other people, since they are part of society. Therefore, the environment needs to be convinced, using sophistic technologies of speech construction, that it is necessary for them. That is, the young man who accepted sophistic views learned not only to know himself, but also, having set a certain goal, achieve it and prove that he was right under any circumstances.
"Socratic Dialogue"
Socrates departs from the earthly. He rises higher in considering such a concept as an act. What is it, what is its essence? This is what the thinker wants to understand. He seeks the meaning of all human existence, starting from the physical and selfish. Thus, it is produced a complex system techniques, which was called “Socratic dialogue”. These methods lead a person along the path of knowledge of the truth. The philosopher leads the interlocutor to understand the deep meaning of masculinity, goodness, valor, moderation, virtue. Without such qualities, an individual cannot consider himself a human being. Virtue is the developed habit of always striving for good, which will form the corresponding good deeds.
Vice and driving force
The opposite of virtue is vice. It shapes a person’s actions, directing them towards evil. In order to establish himself in virtue, a person must acquire knowledge and acquire prudence. Socrates did not deny the presence of pleasures in human life. But he denied their decisive power over him. The basis of bad actions is ignorance, and the basis of moral actions is knowledge. In his research, he analyzed a lot of human action: what is its motive, impulse. The thinker comes close to the Christian views formed later. We can say that he deeply penetrated into the human essence of man, into the concept of the essence of knowledge, prudence and the origin of vice.
Aristotle's view
Aristotle criticizes Socrates. He does not deny the importance of knowledge for a person to always do good deeds. He says that actions are determined by the influence of passion. Explaining this by saying that often a person who has knowledge acts badly, since feeling prevails over wisdom. According to Aristotle, the individual has no power over himself. And, accordingly, knowledge does not determine his actions. In order to perform good deeds, a person needs a morally stable position, his volitional orientation, and a certain experience acquired when he experiences sorrow and receives pleasure. It is grief and joy that, according to Aristotle, are the measure of human actions. The guiding force is the will, which is formed by the freedom of choice of a person.
Measure of actions
He introduces the concept of the measure of actions: lack, excess and what is between them. It is by acting according to middle-level patterns, the philosopher believes, that a person makes right choice. An example of such a measure is masculinity, which falls between such qualities as reckless courage and cowardice. He also divides actions into voluntary, when the source lies within the person himself, and involuntary, forced external circumstances. Considering the action, the essence of the concept, the corresponding role in the life of a person and society, we draw some conclusions. We can say that to a certain extent both philosophers are right. They were considering inner man quite deeply, avoiding superficial judgments and being in search of the truth.
Kant's view
Kant made a significant contribution to the theory that considers the concept of action and its motivation. He talks about the need to act in such a way that you can say: “Do as I do...”. By this he emphasizes that an act can be considered truly moral when the motivation is free morality, sounding in a person’s soul like an alarm bell. Historians of philosophy believe: human actions and their motives are determined by Kant, from the point of view of rigorism.
For example, considering the situation with a drowning person, Kant argues: if a parent saves his child, this act will not be moral. After all, it is dictated by a feeling of natural love for his own heir. will be the case if a person saves a drowning man unknown to him, guided by the principle: “ Human life- the highest value." There is another option. If a truly moral heroic deed worthy of high recognition was saved. Subsequently, Kant softened these concepts and combined in them such human motives as love and duty.
Relevance of the concept of action
The concept of good deeds continues to be discussed today. How often does society recognize as moral the actions of great people, the motive of which in fact was not at all good goals. What is heroism and courage these days? Of course, to save a person or animal from death, to feed the hungry, to clothe the needy. Even the simplest action can be called a real good deed: advice to a friend, help to a colleague, calling your parents. Taking an old woman across the road, giving alms to a poor man, picking up a piece of paper on the street are acts that also fall into this category. As for heroism, it is based on sacrificing one’s life for the benefit of others. This is, first of all, the defense of the Motherland from enemies, the work of firefighters, police, and rescuers. You can even become a hero a common person, if he took a baby out of the fire, neutralized a robber, covered with his chest a passerby at whom the barrel of a machine gun was aimed.
According to many psychologists, philosophers and theologians, until the age of seven, a child is not able to fully distinguish between good and evil. Therefore, appealing to conscience is useless, due to the fact that the concept for it has very blurred boundaries. However, from the age of seven, he is a fully formed personality who can already consciously make a choice in one direction or another. The actions of children at this time must be skillfully directed by their parents in the right direction.
I wrote this article after reading Jack Canfield’s book “Medicine for the Soul” (“Chicken Soup for the Soul”; his story is in the movie “The Secret”). There was a lot in the book good stories: some are kind, others are sad. On this wave, I wanted to write an article about good deeds, namely what good deeds everyone can do. Probably many people have a desire to do something good, they just don’t know how or don’t see the opportunity to help someone.
In any case, every good deed will add to your karma). Especially if you are now actively working on making your desires come true and moving towards your dream. I think a good deed will help you fulfill your wish.
35 good deeds that everyone can do:
- Pay for someone else's travel, for example for a child or grandmother.
- Compliment the person on the service staff, say something really nice and praise them for their work.
- Register on the website for helping business ideas and donate 100 -200 rubles there.
- Transfer 100-200 rubles to the account of a children's fund or orphanage. It is useful to donate money on the new moon or Ekadashi, so it will return to you in larger quantities.
- On New Year or just on any holiday, you can find out what is missing in the orphanage and buy it. Usually they have a lot of candies and sweets, but they may not have clothes, diapers or educational games.
- Join a group that helps children or people with disabilities, and at least sometimes help them. There are such groups on VKontakte.
- Try to be a volunteer in an orphanage.
- Try volunteering in a nursing home.
- Buy a box of holiday food for a needy family with many children.
- Buy groceries for a lonely old woman who is left alone in her old age. You don't have to go far, she can live next door. In public gardens, grandmothers often feed cats or birds, giving them their bread.
- Add money in a supermarket or store when someone lacks change. And then pretend that this is how it should be when people stare.
- When you take your child somewhere on vacation, also take the child of your friends who does not have a father or simply has little money in the family.
- Support someone else's initiative to help people or animals, protect environment. There are campaigns to collect items.
- Drop some money into a donation box, usually located in a public place. It doesn't matter whether the money reaches the recipient. Do it for yourself, the main thing is your desire to help.
- If you are a coach and teach your own courses, then give the task to your students to group together and help the orphanage together.
- If you are a teacher, then give some inspiring task for your students. Do something so that this day or lesson will be remembered for a long time. Here are two inspiring ones and a Pearl of great value.”
- Buy food for a homeless person. But don't give money for alcohol, it's considered a bad donation
- Give some unnecessary clean clothes to the church; there are special warehouses where volunteers collect things for the poor. There are more in shopping centers containers for unnecessary things. Benefits for those in need and for the environment.
- Collect bottles after the party and place them near trash cans. Environmental protection and all that. You can even add a full bottle of mineral water or drink there.
- Adopt a homeless pet from the shelter. If there are no such shelters, then you can try to organize them yourself.
- Place a homeless animal with friends who live in the private sector. Cats and dogs are always useful there.
- Go at least once adult life, on a cleanup day deliberately.
- While on vacation in nature, remove not only your own garbage, but also other people’s garbage that pollutes your vacation spot. Mothers clean up bottles and wrappers on the playground after their own and other people's children.
- Support another person in a difficult or awkward situation that may upset their feelings self-esteem. Help a stranger save his face. for motivation.
- Help someone make their long-time dream come true. It may be a small thing for you, but it is very important for the other person. The movie “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” immediately comes to mind.
- Donate money to your favorite site or any site you visit for the development of the project. (soon I will install such a button for myself to Help the project) :).
- Give a depressed person a book that has inspired and helped you. Probably everyone has done this in life, no matter whether they read it or not. You can donate 10 books if you wish.
- Give your old computer or phone to an orphan or just some child. You will be surprised, but in villages still not all children and adults have computers and cell phones. Or maybe you won’t be surprised.
- Compliment someone's creativity today. A book, website, drawing, program, article, embroidery or service.
- Praise the talent of a child today. Tell him that you see a special talent in him, tell him that he will most likely achieve a lot in life. We can carry some kind words in our hearts throughout our lives.
- Give someone a ride for free. Eternal gratitude to the bus driver who took me to the Left Bank for free, because then I had no money. And I went to borrow money from my aunt. It’s a pity that I didn’t remember you and I can’t thank you in any way. You just nodded to the conductor, but it meant a lot to me.
- Help some student relative with money. Throw some money in just like that. Just like my uncle Serik did when I was still studying at Agrarian University. This money then seemed simply huge. I remember reading some story, I really remembered it, although I don’t remember the author. As one student was given 3 rubles (Soviet times) by a man from his village, this man was influential in the village, but was not considered kind at all. It was a lot of money for a student and it meant a lot to him. And after many years, this student-no-longer-student repaid the debt, he gave other money to this man, who became a poor dispossessed old man. For the old man, this money was big, it meant a lot, and you could see it in his eyes.
- Thank a schoolteacher from your childhood who stood out to you. Maybe she praised you or saw some kind of talent in you, said a kind word to you. Teachers often told us at school how their adult students came to visit them and brought gifts. They said this with pride in their voices and remembered it all their lives. Become one of these students.
- Help your grandparents, lonely neighbors, not with money, but simply help them clean up, nail down a shelf, plant potatoes. I remember at school we went to class and helped plant potatoes, it was fun.
- Feed a stray cat or dog. I once read a story that the owners die, and the dogs sit near the graves. And people go and feed such devoted dogs.
Good deeds especially for bloggers or website owners:
Write an article about someone's kind and good deed that you have heard or read about.
Write your success story.
Post any other person's success story that has inspired you.
Donate money for the development of a website or project.
Help a young blogger with advice or PR.
Write a positive comment on a blog that doesn't have any comments yet.
Know that you can always change the life of another person with a kind deed and your creativity.
“Not a single good deed, no matter how small, is wasted.”
Aesop
1. A good deed that led to a woman risking her life to shelter a Jewish family
In 1941, Zofia Banya, a poor woman from a Polish farm, discovered that she did not have enough money to buy food at the general store. Consumables that her family needed. The store owner, Israel Rubinek, told her to take the things she needed and pay for them when she could. This act of kindness was literally unheard of in war-torn Poland, and Banya did not forget it.
Two years later, the Nazis were hunting down Jews in Poland and sending them to concentration camps. Fearing for the life of the good young man, who helped her, Banya, risking her life, hid Rubinek and his wife in her house for two and a half years. Seven times German soldiers came to the Bani farm in search of hiding Jews, and each time Sophia's family hid them in a tiny underground. One night, Nazi soldiers slept in the Bathhouse's living room, just a few centimeters from where Rubinek and his wife were hidden.
Decades passed, and Rubinek's family met the woman who hid them from the Nazis. Their granddaughter says: “One incredibly good deed in the impossible difficult situation, everything changed. The depth of the human soul cannot be measured or explained. These poor Polish farmers feared for their lives, yet they decided to help two people they barely knew.”
2. Kind words from a boss kept a man from committing suicide. 
Tim Sanders - coach personal growth and former head of marketing at Yahoo! Sanders recommends that all of his employees communicate with their colleagues and subordinates and praise them for their work. He often tells the story of how he did just that: he talked to his subordinates personally and praised them for the work they did, and let them know that he personally and the company as a whole appreciated their efforts. Sanders remembers once telling a person that he was glad that this person came into his life and that he appreciated him.
After Sanders visited the man's team, he was shocked when the man showed up a few days later and gave him an expensive gift - an Xbox game console. As it turned out, the employee purchased this game console in exchange for a revolver with which he wanted to kill himself. After he heard kind words from his boss, the man decided to move on with his life and recover from depression. Just a couple kind words kept him from committing suicide.
"Sometimes people just need to see human attitude to yourself,” Sanders says.
3. Teens saved a little girl from being kidnapped 
In July 2013, five-year-old Jocelyn Rojas was playing in her yard in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, when she suddenly disappeared. Rojas' parents feared the worst, so they notified the police and began intensively searching the area.
Instead of waiting for the police to find the little girl, fifteen-year-old Temar Boggs and his friend decided to start searching for her themselves. They soon noticed Rojas in a car with a man, so they followed the car on bicycles. The teenagers chased the car for fifteen minutes while the man behind the wheel tried to escape from them. Finally, he apparently gave up, pulled over and threw the child out of the car.
“She ran up to me and said she wanted to see her mom,” Temar said.
4. A 21-year-old organ donor saved seven lives.
Organ donors are heroes who perform the most selfless acts imaginable. When Henry Mackaman, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, died of bacterial meningitis in May 2013, his family found some small solace in his decision to donate his organs.
McMann's simple decision to check the Organ Donor box on his driver's license proved to be an invaluable act that would later save the lives of seven people. His mother wrote the following on the CaringBridge website: “We are all proud of Henry's decision to be an organ donor. His generosity does not surprise anyone who knew him. Thanks to his decision, up to 54 people will have the chance to improve their lives thanks to a piece of the incredible life Henry lived.”
5. A man jumped onto the tracks to save a stranger 
In January 2007, twenty-year-old Cameron Hollopeter was waiting for a train on the New York subway when he had a seizure and began convulsing. Trying to get up, he fell on the tracks at the exact moment when the train came around the corner and rushed towards him.
Fifty year old builder and veteran navy Wesley Autrey was talking to his two daughters when he saw a man falling. In a split second, he made a decision and jumped onto the tracks to help Hollopiter. Autry covered Hollopeter with his body, pushed him and moved him so that they lay together between the rails. The driver honked his horn and tried to stop, but it was too late and the train passed over both men.
Five carriages passed over the pair of men, just inches from Autry's head. When the train finally stopped, he told the people screaming in horror that they were okay. Hailed as a hero, Autry later said, “I don’t feel like I did anything special, I just saw someone who needed help. I did what I had to do."
6. A ten-year-old boy stood up to bullies to save a cat. 
Standing up to bullies isn't easy, but that's exactly what Wendell Overton did when he saw a group of kids tormenting a stray cat in the area. Overton had already noticed this cat in the area several times, but one day he saw a group of hooligan children, aged from five to thirteen, who ran over the poor animal with bicycles, threw it into the air, and splashed energy drinks in its face. Fearing they would kill the cat, Overton bravely intervened and took the cat home to his mother, who called the Outer Banks Humane Society.
When news of Overton's compassion and kindness became public, he received countless letters of praise and encouragement from all over the world.
7. Strangers lined up to save a drowning boy 
Sunny day on the beach in Napier New Zealand, twelve-year-old Josh McQuoid was standing knee-deep in water, playing with friends, when a dangerous current knocked him off his feet and carried him far from the shore. The boy tried to keep his head above the water, struggling with the raging waves.
Another beachgoer and two police officers spotted the boy struggling in the waves and rushed into the water to help him, but the waves were too strong. After Constable Bryan Farquharson realized he couldn't reach the boy without falling victim to the waves himself, he organized a chain of people to reach the child while remaining tied to the shore.
8. A stranger’s kiss saved a man who was trying to commit suicide
In the city of Shenzhen, Guangdong Province, China, a sixteen-year-old boy stood on a bridge, threatening to jump off and commit suicide. Hundreds of onlookers watched in horror as he refused to cross back to the safe side of the railing. The police arrived at the scene and began to negotiate with him, but no one could reach him.
At that moment, Liu Wenxiu, a nineteen-year-old hotel waitress, was returning home from work when she noticed the guy and knew that she had to do something to help him. Wenxue herself once wanted to commit suicide, so she knew exactly how the guy felt. After telling police she was his girlfriend, Liu got close enough to talk to him. She shared with him her sad story about her difficult life and showed him the scar on her wrist left after she tried to commit suicide by cutting her wrists.
“He said he was hopeless and that I shouldn't waste my time trying to save him. But I told him, “I'm not trying to save your life, I just want you to understand how stupid you are being. Look at me, I was in the same situation as you, but now everything has changed,” Wenxue said.
Finally, the girl was able to lean in and hug him, and then she suddenly kissed him. The police were then able to take the knife the guy was holding and move him to the safe side of the bridge railing.
9. A woman saved children from a rolling truck 
Lezlie Bicknell had just parked in a store parking lot in Albuquerque, New Mexico, when she noticed a small child in the driver's seat of a truck parked next to her car. Suddenly, the truck began to roll backwards, straight towards a very busy street. Without a moment's hesitation, Bicknell jumped out of her car to stop the moving car. Because of this, her own car began to roll backwards, cutting off the truck's path and stopping it, preventing it from entering the highway.
Below is an amazing video of the incident:
10. A woman absolutely donated a kidney. to a stranger
Retired police sergeant Michael Newman needed a kidney to survive, so his former officers made a desperate appeal through local media to find a donor. Michael, who lives in Phoenix, Arizona, didn't have much hope that anyone would be his donor. However, a local woman named Kellie Boff printed out the article and set it aside. Boff says she kept coming back to the article, drawn to it for no reason. Finally, she picked up the phone and called the Mayo Clinic.
It turned out that Boff was the ideal donor. So she agreed to donate one of her kidneys to Sergeant Newman, whom she had never even met.
