Develop Your Own Helping Rituals伸出你的友爱之手

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.

如果你想让自己的生活安宁祥和，最好做一些友善平和的事情。我最喜欢的一种方式是培养 自己乐于助人的习惯。这些小小的善行让你有机会去帮助别人，让你意识到待人友善、乐于助人的感觉有多好。

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.

我们住在旧金山圣弗朗西斯科湾地区的郊外。我们目所能及的几乎都是美丽的自然风光。与这美景不太和谐的是有人驱车行驶在乡间小路上时随手从车窗往外扔垃圾。而居住在这种偏远的地方的一个缺点就是缺少必要的公共服务，例如，垃圾的收集就不如靠近市区那样方便。

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."

我跟我的两个孩子经常做的一件事就是捡拾我们周围地区的垃圾。对此我们已经习以为常，我的女儿们经常会兴奋地对我说，“爸爸，这儿有垃圾，请停一下车!”只要时间来得及，我们总是将车开到路边并将垃圾捡起来。这似乎有点不可思议，但我们真的喜欢这样做。我们在公园里，人行道上，几乎任何地方捡拾垃圾。曾经有一次，我在我们家附近看到一位陌生人在捡垃圾。他笑着对我说，“我看到你这么做了，看来是个好主意。”

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.

捡垃圾只不过是无数善意行为中的一种形式而已。你可以为别人开门，或者去敬老院看望那些孤独的老人，或者清除别人行车道上的积雪。总会想出一些似乎毫不费力但又非常有益的事情。这真的很有趣，自己会感觉很好，也为别人树立了榜样。每个人都会从中受益。