An Example of True Altruism
Get your sharpened pencils ready
Yesterday afternoon, my twin sister interrupted my attempt at a nap with the news that we had to go rescue Ryan, whose car had broken down in Fayetteville.
My sister was sheepish as she spoke, as well she should have been. For context, Ryan is her son’s friend, and Fayetteville is four hours away. It was already 2:30 p.m., meaning we wouldn’t get home until 10:30, and I still had work to do to get my online course ready for the week.
I groaned and said, “Okay,” in a petulant little voice.
Ryan’s family sucks. They do too many drugs to even care that he was stranded on the other side of the state. My sister has always been a mom to her son’s friends, and so she’s the one he reached out to for help. She really didn’t have a choice — and there’s no way I’d let her drive all that way by herself. She gets lost too easily.
I’ve heard it said that altruism doesn’t really exist, that even when people help others with no expectation of repayment, they still get the reward of feeling good about it. But we didn’t feel good about it. If there had been an option to stab ourselves with sharpened pencils instead, we would have taken it.
This is altruism — when you do something good for someone else, even though you really, really, really don’t want to.
Fortunately, Ryan has a cousin in Fayetteville who was willing to drive him to Russellville, which is only two and a half hours from us. We got to Russellville a half hour before Ryan did, so I consoled myself with a strawberry frosty at Wendy’s. Was that my reward? If so, I would have gladly traded that frosty for permission to stay home.
Ryan’s brother was with him. They had been at a hippie music festival, and they smelled like fellas who have been in the sun without a shower for a few days. The brother had lost his shirt somewhere, so he was bare-chested. His shoes had given him blisters, so he was also in his bare feet. I had never met the brother, but now I know he can talk for two and a half hours without coming up for a breath.
By the time we dropped the boys off with some of their friends and drove home, it was after nine o’clock. On a typical work night, I go to bed at 8:30. I was tired, too tired to do the work I needed to do. So I got up at five o’clock and got my course ready for the week. I’m glad we helped Ryan because it was the right thing to do — but those are hours I’ll never get back.
