30 People Reveal The Most Intimate Moments They Had With People They've Never Seen In Their Lives Before

Redditor u/Pielef’s thread on the r/AskReddit subreddit touched a lot of hearts. It’s incredibly difficult not to smile when reading these stories because they touch something primal in all of us—the beauty of seeing an altruistic act when it’s least expected.

The Mental Health Foundation explains that, at its very core, being kind to others makes us feel good. “Helping others can also improve our support networks and encourage us to be more active. This in turn can improve our self-esteem,” they explain that kindness does wonders for our social network.

What’s more, altruism creates a sense of belonging and reduces our feelings of isolation if we have any. We can start feeling connected to our local community by helping our neighbors or complete strangers in need.

“Helping others, especially those who are less fortunate than yourself, can help to put things into perspective and make you feel more positive. There is some evidence that being aware of your own acts of kindness, as well as the things you are grateful for, can increase feelings of happiness, optimism, and satisfaction. Doing good may help you to have a more positive outlook about your own circumstances,” writes the Mental Health Foundation.

Furthermore, acts of kindness are contagious. Well, in a way. We’re far more likely to be altruistic ourselves when we witness kindness or are on the receiving end of it. In short, kindness begets kindness.

Psychotherapist Silva from the United Kingdom explained to Bored Panda that human beings have two opposite instincts within themselves. One of them is directly linked to kindness and altruism. The other relates to survival and the desire to protect ourselves.

In other words, we’re constantly balancing the pros and cons of whether or not we should lend a helping hand (because we fear it might backfire on us in some way).

The therapist listed a number of reasons why being kind and altruistic benefits us and why we’re driven to these behaviors.

“Being kind is good for us because it gives us a sense of purpose, it raises our self-esteem, and it releases feel-good brain chemicals,” he told Bored Panda.

“It [kindness] is also good for others, obviously. So kindness is actually something that we, humans, are naturally driven to be,” the expert shared how we’re hard-wired to act kindly towards others.

However, there is a catch. While we do tend to want to help other human beings, we’re also wary of strangers. “The sense of kindness is in competition with our survival mode, so, as human beings, we tend to live in contradiction, between kindness (opening our arms) and protection (closing our arms),” he said.

Human beings aren’t the only ones capable of altruism and kindness. There’s a case for biological altruism that doesn’t even require a species to have the same level of consciousness as human beings do.

Or, in other words, altruism doesn’t necessarily need kind intent to be altruistic. However, complex social structures seem to lead to more instances of kindness.