35 Times Total Strangers Made Each Other’s Day

One thing that we learned from u/v_rose23’s thread is that Planet Earth has a lot of everyday heroes. They swoop in, completely unexpected, to spread kindness and love. And their support can mean a huge deal to someone who’s in pain or in need of a helping hand.

During a previous interview, British psychotherapist Silva Neves explained to Bored Panda that human beings are hardwired for kindness. In short, our brains reward us when we’re social and altruistic. However, that doesn’t mean that there isn't a selfish side to us.

According to the psychotherapist, people have two different instincts: one for kindness and one for survival. The desire to help others vies for control with our desire to protect ourselves. It’s a constant inner battle because we’re worried that by helping someone, it might somehow backfire on us.

However, there are lots of benefits to being kind, too. “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,” Silva explained to Bored Panda.

“It [kindness] is also good for others, obviously. So kindness is actually something that we, humans, are naturally driven to be,” he said.

The psychotherapist drew attention to the fact that despite our inner desire to be kind towards others, human beings are also generally 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),” Silva said.