, help someone else. Recent brain research has shown that specific pleasure centers in the brain fire when we act with compassio
n toward someone else. Interestingly, those same pleasure centers go off when we simply observe an act of compassion. Perhaps this is evidence that human beings are designed to be kind to each other. I know I always feel good about myself when I act generously toward another. The opposite is also true: I never feel good about myself when I am mean or even a little unkind. I think the purpose of our lives is to learn lessons, and one of the most profound is to learn to apply the Golden Rule: Treat others and as we would like to be treated. I am a member of an organization that visits people in the hospital before they have heart surgery. The heart patients and their families are so grateful for these visits; you can see the relief all over their faces. But every person who visits says the same thing: "I get more out of this than the patient does. My heart is healed by the relief they feel."
I have long remembered a rhyme that expresses this idea. It goes like this:
There was a man, they called him mad,
The more he gave, the more he had!
Perhaps you have heard this proverb, "We receive what we give." If this saying is true, it means we can't exhaust good vibes by giving them away because we will always end up with good feelings. Another way to say this is "the cost of giving is receiving." Perhaps this is why the Golden Rule works and why it appears in some form in all the world's religions.
In this great classroom called the world, it seems to me that one of the greatest lessons we can learn is that being compassionate with our fellow human beings is a strategy that can only result in our own happiness.
1
In relation to the theme, which of these would the author most likely do?
A.
steal his neighbor's lawn mower
B.
play a practical joke on a friend
C.
give money to a homeless person
D.
forget his best friend's name
