Helping as its own reward

I found myself being drawn to a certain genre of Twitter posts. I think the general theme of these posts is people doing decent things that don't scale and that aren't made for personal benefit.

A lot of them are just people saving animals, like the people in the video below. Maybe saving a shark that's beached on the shore or some elk that are stuck in the water. Or a baby elephant that fell down a ravine, or a dog that can't get out of the water. There's just a lot of videos of people going out of their way to try and save animals.

And they're doing this even though it's not necessarily to their benefit. They didn't try to do it in order to get some engagement on social media. They just instinctively went and did what they thought was right, what needed to be done. A life form needs help, and so help is provided.

It's a refreshing thing to see, especially at a time like this when things are very divisive and people's differences are quite a bit more pronounced than their commonalities. There is just a whole lot of cold, selfish calculation in how people make decisions today.

And so there's something refreshing about just seeing people doing what they think is decent, without analyzing how it could benefit their career or who may be watching. Its refereshing to see people doing something where the risk/reward is only measurable in karma points. The sanctity of life is reason enough.