Benevolence is in Your Interests

Most people aspire to making some form of contribution. We aspire to being able to care for and act for something bigger than our own self-interest. It is for this reason that we have such a high regard for heroes of the past and the present that have made a great contribution. We praise and honour them because we recognise that they have given far more than what they have taken. Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, Mahatma Ghandi, and Desmund Tutu are all examples of such individuals.

It is appropriate that we should aspire to contribution because we somehow recognise that our own well-being is located in making a contribution. We implicitly recognise that those who have lived good and worthy lives have done so because they made the world a better place and helped in the manner that they could, i.e. they made a contribution to the world and were not a burden on it. We see that these people come to possess a sense of fulfilment (giving/contribution is immensely fulfilling), a sense of harmony with the world, a sense of security and ease with what the future will bring, and also a sense of power as they are able to act to make a difference to the people around them. Put simply, the people who live life to contribute are happy.

Most of us would agree with the value of contribution. The biggest barrier preventing us from mobilizing ourselves towards making a contribution is the belief that we have to look after ourselves. Many of us have the view that we have to act in a self-interested manner. We feel that we have to do so because we are convinced that no-one else is going to look after us. We are of the opinion that the universe is a dog eat dog place and we have no other choice but to pursue our own self-interest, even if we hold contribution in such high regard. We do not trust that the universe is benevolently disposed towards us.

If we as human beings are to move towards becoming the sort of individual worth esteem we must each one of us transcend the view that the universe is out to get us. In order to unlock the capacity to be benign, to contribute, we must view the universe as benign. We must overcome the conviction that we have to act for our own self-interest. We have to learn to trust that the universe is there to help us and not harm us.

There are numerous philosophical arguments that can be given in order to attempt to convince the sceptics of this view. I don’t want to get into that though. What I want to do is offer an example from a person who told a simple story when the topic was discussed during a Grow to Care[1] program conducted by Schuitema Associates consultant Pam Pretorius. The story illustrates an instance in which ignoring self-interest did not have any negative consequences. She acted in order to be helpful and her own interests were taken care of.

Her name is Sindi Walters. Sindi’s story happened just before her children went back to school. Money was tight and all that was left to buy was school shoes.  A friend in need approached her and she made the choice to give her friend the money she so desperately needed without thinking about what would happen next, other than to trust the universe would look after her in some way.  Even though the need was acutely felt Sindi did not act in a self-interested manner. A few days later Sindi had a windfall that solved her problem – what she had given away came back to her ten-fold.

This story is a great example of trusting that the universe is there to help and not to harm us. We should all be on the look-out for stories such as this, stories which illustrated to us that ignoring self-interest is not akin to cutting one’s own throat. We can all find stories like this in our own lives if we are deliberate about recognizing them. This is the only way we can convince ourselves that the universe is benign and that we do not need to be self-interested. We must behave as if the universe is benign so that we can see for ourselves that we do not need to spend our lives looking after ourselves. We can look after making a contribution in whatever that may take and see that we ourselves are looked after.