Develop Your Own Helping Rituals伸出你的友愛之手

By Richard Carlson

If you want your life to stand for peace and kindness, it’s helpful to do kind, peaceful things. One of my favorite ways to do this is by developing my own helping rituals. These little acts of kindness are opportunities to be of service and reminders of how good it feels to be kind and helpful.

如果你想讓自己的生活安寧祥和，最好做一些友善平和的事情。我最喜歡的一種方式是培養 自己樂于助人的習慣。這些小小的善行讓你有機會去幫助別人，讓你意識到待人友善、樂于助人的感覺有多好。

We live in a rural area of the San Francisco Bay Area. Most of what we see is beauty and nature. One of the exceptions to the beauty is the litter that some people throw out of their windows as they are driving on the rural roads. One of the few drawbacks to living out the boondocks is that public services, such as litter collection, are less available than they are closer to the city.

我們住在舊金山圣弗朗西斯科灣地區的郊外。我們目所能及的幾乎都是美麗的自然風光。與這美景不太和諧的是有人驅車行駛在鄉間小路上時隨手從車窗往外扔垃圾。而居住在這種偏遠的地方的一個缺點就是缺少必要的公共服務，例如，垃圾的收集就不如靠近市區那樣方便。

A helping ritual that I practice regularly with my two children is picking up litter in our surrounding area. We’ve become so accustomed to doing this that my daughters will often say to me in animated voices, "There’s some litter, Daddy, stop the car!" And if we have time, we will often pull over and pick it up. It may seem strange, but we actually enjoy it. We pick up litter in parks, on sidewalks, practically anywhere. Once I even saw a complete stranger picking up litter close to where we live. He smiled at me and said, "I saw you doing it, and it seemed like a good idea."

我跟我的兩個孩子經常做的一件事就是撿拾我們周圍地區的垃圾。對此我們已經習以為常，我的女兒們經常會興奮地對我說，“爸爸，這兒有垃圾，請停一下車!”只要時間來得及，我們總是將車開到路邊并將垃圾撿起來。這似乎有點不可思議，但我們真的喜歡這樣做。我們在公園里，人行道上，幾乎任何地方撿拾垃圾。曾經有一次，我在我們家附近看到一位陌生人在撿垃圾。他笑著對我說，“我看到你這么做了，看來是個好主意。”

Picking up litter is only one of an endless supply of possible helping rituals. You might like holding a door open for people, visiting lonely elderly people in nursing homes, or shoveling snow off someone else’s driveway. Think of something that seems effortless yet helpful. It’s fun, personally rewarding, and sets a good example. Everyone wins.

撿垃圾只不過是無數善意行為中的一種形式而已。你可以為別人開門，或者去敬老院看望那些孤獨的老人，或者清除別人行車道上的積雪。總會想出一些似乎毫不費力但又非常有益的事情。這真的很有趣，自己會感覺很好，也為別人樹立了榜樣。每個人都會從中受益。