From & To Sathish #7 - Page 58

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy40e08k1p0o?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ten_tabs&utm_campaign=FIREFOX-EDITORIAL-TENTABS-2025_08_11&position=9&category=fascinating_stories&scheduled_corpus_item_id=0a53699c-c45b-4bc1-81ee-55686430948e&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Farticles%2Fcy40e08k1p0o

So bad they're good - why do we love terrible films?

Unnamed - 34 Anjali's story

The beauty of motherhood is not in reproduction but in inclusion – to experience another life as a part of yourself.

I heard his voice even through closed doors. . I heard and felt the pain in his voice in my soul even though the painkillers made me feel groggy and sleepy. Gently nudging Prakash, my husband who had dozed still sitting in the chair with his head by my side, I mouthed, ' Guna has arrived. Guna is here'.

Immediately, Prakash turned his face towards the door and hearing nothing, patted my hand and comforted me saying, ' I don't hear anything Anju. He will be here any moment, ma. He messaged me the moment he landed in Chennai.

Then hearing people talking softly in the corridor outside the room, Prakash rushed to the door, and opening it stepped out to see who were doing the talking.

Then he immediately rushed back to my side with an incredulous expression on his face, and looking down at me said, ' You were right. Guna and Saritha are here and are talking to Padma, but they are at the other end of the corridor. How did you...'

I looked at my husband and smiling with pride and love mouthed, ' I have told you million times that Guna and I share a bond that is special and unique to both of us. Our bond forged while he was inside our mothers womb and it became stronger after they died when he was just two years of age.'

Picking up a wet tissue, Prakash gently wiped my face and then placing an ice cube in my dried up mouth, proceeded to stare at me for a long time and seeing my eyes searching the door, joked, ' Okay madam. Now that your son is here, I guess I will not be required for the next couple of hours. I will leave you both to yourselves, but ' turning and pointing to the door, ' I will be outside. Call me if you need anything.'

Gently kissing my forehead and my eyes, he whispered, ' I love you, Anju. I fell in love the moment the very first time we came to your house to meet you and your parents. That love and respect doubled and trebled, that day, when you stood up for your parents and told them before your entire family that you would support them in your Mother's late pregnancy. If that was not brave enough, your decision not to have children of our own when your parents died leaving behind a two-year old Guna in your care bowled me over completely. That was the day, I became your slave. I remain that to this day and as long as there is life in my body.'

' Darling, all that was possible for me and by me because I had you by my side. It was you who made it all possible and it was because of your love and support that Guna is where he is today. You, my dear husband are the real source of all this that defines me.'

Unable to control himself, Prakash began to cry like a little boy, and raising my arms, I took him and gently rested him on my chest and whispered, ' In a way you too are my precious little one.'

The door opened and moving my head slightly, I saw Guna and he saw me. Wiping his eyes, Prakash mumbled, ' I will leave you alone now ' and after exchanging a quick hug with Guna, he left, closing the door behind him, with me and my little brother and son staring at one another.

There is so much that we can say when we open our mouths to speak, talk and share but you can do all that and more with one look.

I patted the bed and he came and after sitting down, looked at me and continued to look at me without saying anything.

Sometimes it is better to let certain emotions remain unspoken. But they are neither unnamed or unknowable.

Words can never do justice to emotions and one always is left thinking, ' I wanted to say more. I should have expressed myself in a more eloquent manner.'

Sorry, thoughts that are part of our essence and our soul can never be given perfect form or meaning through words for something is always lost in Translation.

I let him take both my hands in his and I watched as he kissed them and then I heard him say, ' Amma, will you at least now agree with me when I say, there is no God. There never was, and all that we call life and existence is just pure co-incidence. A series of trial and error that great minds call evolution and nature.'

' So much cynicism at such an young age. Baby, I wish I could be around to see what you will have to say when you are my age. Sadly, I will not be able to manage that...'

Holding my hands to his lips, Guna replied, ' I will say the same thing, Amma. More so, then, than now, for I would have lived out another twenty years without your love,and care.'

https://psyche.co/ideas/why-do-we-hesitate-to-talk-about-our-own-good-deeds

Why do we hesitate to talk about our own good deeds?

by Jerry Richardson, PhD candidate in social psychology

Disclosing acts of kindness could encourage even more altruism – if we can find a way around the awkwardness

When I handed $7 worth of groceries to a person who was asking for help outside a supermarket in Los Angeles, he beamed with appreciation. The look on his face warmed my heart. I felt amazing. Based on what we know about human behaviour, my reaction was not surprising. Social scientists have long documented the ‘warm glow’ of altruism, a good feeling that comes from doing a good deed. But later, at a dinner party – as I considered sharing with my friends what happened – I experienced a more complicated reaction. I felt a strange mix of the lingering joy of doing something kind, the anticipation of being praised for the act, and an icky feeling that I couldn’t quite name. In the end, concern about the icky feeling kept me quiet.

A similar emotional reaction prevented me from hitting ‘Post’ on a Facebook update about the positive encounter. It’s been years since that day, but the warm glow I felt from giving someone just $7 worth of groceries? That stuck around for about three months. I couldn’t help but wonder whether I would have felt as good had I told my friends or posted the story on social media, which I was strongly tempted to do.

After the emotional tug-of-war I experienced, I suspected that other people would recognise this conflict, too. Deep down, many of us would like others to know when we’ve helped a stranger, donated to a charity, or supported a friend who’s going through a difficult experience. But we sense that sharing the story ourselves would cost us something. As Oscar Wilde is credited with saying: ‘The nicest feeling in the world is to do a good deed anonymously – and have somebody find out.’ This line perfectly captures what my colleagues and I call ‘the do-gooder dilemma’: wanting your good deeds to be known, but not wanting to be the one who makes them known.

The issue is that making our altruistic behaviours more visible could have real benefits. Recent social psychology research suggests that, if people tell others about their own charitable giving online, it can make that kind of generosity seem like the norm, potentially sparking a chain reaction and boosting charitable donations. When people see others engaging in a behaviour, they are more likely to follow suit. This logic is sound. But based on my own complicated experience, I began to wonder if something was missing from our understanding of the psychology behind doing good deeds and the impulse (or hesitation) to share them.

When people do talk about their own good deeds, they are often judged negatively, research has shown, particularly if their announcements are public. Observers tend to assume that the person who did something good was acting out of selfishness all along – as if they had first calculated the reputational boost they would receive, commenced with the good act, and announced it in order to collect social credit. Self-promotion seems to ‘taint’ the goodness of the act, because by definition an altruistic act must involve behaviour that both benefits someone else and is costly to oneself. Self-benefit is not part of the equation.

But these findings are all about how people who disclose their good deeds are regarded by others. Past research has not explored how good-doers themselves feel about relating their acts of kindness to others. So my collaborators and I set out to learn whether people think that talking about these acts would leave them feeling better or worse – and why.

We know there are social norms against bragging about achievements, such as getting a job promotion or winning a race, and we wanted to test whether there is an even stronger tension related to self-reporting good deeds. We suspected that people would feel embarrassed to report their own achievements, due to modesty norms, but that talking about their own good deeds would make them anticipate feeling even worse. We randomly assigned research participants to recall either a personal achievement or a good deed they had done, and we asked them how positively (happy, proud) or negatively (ashamed, embarrassed) they felt about it. Then, we asked them to imagine how they would feel if they told a friend about it or posted about it on social media.

People seem to know that telling others about their good deeds can tarnish their emotional rewards

Compared with their feelings about the good deed itself, the participants expected that they would feel significantly worse – more shame and embarrassment along with less happiness and pride – after telling others about it, especially if they shared it on social media. And although they reported feeling similarly good about their achievements and their good deeds, they imagined that they would feel much worse when sharing a good deed than when sharing a personal achievement.

Interestingly, participants didn’t expect someone else who shared about their own good deed to have this negative response. They seemed to assume that another person would feel equally good whether they kept their deed private or not. We can’t say with certainty why they thought this, but we suspect it comes down to something simple: most people don’t vividly and specifically simulate what it’s like to be someone else. As a result, they often fail to ascribe to others the kinds of complex emotional experiences (such as ambivalence about sharing good deeds) that they know they would feel themselves.

Why, then, might self-reporting a good deed seem like it would feel worse than self-reporting an achievement? We asked our participants about this directly, and some common themes emerged. In line with what research on altruism suggests, to summarise their responses, they told us that, if you tell others about your good deed, people might assume you did it just to get credit, and that it contradicts the notion that good deeds should be done for their own sake. They believed that the moment you publicise your good deed, the act is no longer purely altruistic, which erases the good feeling you might have as a result. In short, people seem to know that telling others about their good deeds can tarnish their emotional rewards and lead to suspicion.

Of course, people do want to be viewed as morally good. Having others know that you do good things is a reputation booster; morally good people get more access to social partners, opportunities, and resources. But the anticipated emotional cost of self-disclosure creates a tension, encouraging people to limit how much they talk about their own morally good behaviours.

As I mentioned, research has shown that a lot of good can come from sharing. In fact, I feel relatively good about finally sharing the story of my own good deed, in part because it might encourage someone else to do something similar. Perhaps once enough time has gone by, people no longer feel as badly about self-reporting good deeds because the warm glow has passed. Or maybe it’s just that writing about good deeds in the context of an article provides a buffer. We need more research to know exactly when and why we don’t feel bad when we talk about our own good deeds.

However, another possible solution to the ‘do-gooder dilemma’ is to talk about the good deeds of others – and to let others talk about yours. Doing so might allow us to preserve the warm glow of altruism, avoid the awkwardness of self-promotion and suspicion about one’s motivations, and still encourage altruistic behaviour through social contagion. It could even offer an extra reward: the joy of celebrating someone else. Close friends and family, and sometimes coworkers, are well positioned to witness each other’s good deeds. But these deeds may go unnoticed and unacknowledged unless talking about other people’s kind acts becomes an established practice. If enough people in any given community or workplace pay more attention and describe the good deeds they witness (knowing that this in itself will probably feel good), then this kind of prosocial storytelling could become the norm.

If you run into that icky feeling, consider spotlighting someone else’s altruism instead

To put this into practice: a friend of mine recently organised a farewell dinner for a colleague who was starting a position elsewhere. She found a restaurant, scheduled a mutually good time, sent reminders, and gave a gracious toast to celebrate our departing colleague. She organised an event for someone else at significant personal cost. She probably wouldn’t tell you that she did so, but I feel good about sharing what she did. Here’s another example: my wife and I recently went on a four-day backpacking trip and, within an hour, the sole of her boot started coming off. A hiker who had just come down the mountain overheard our ordeal and said: ‘Why don’t you just take my boots?’ We were stunned. She said she had shoes in her car and was flying home the next day. The hiker might feel weird about telling others that she did this. But I enjoy sharing the story because it sheds light on the generosity of strangers – and might encourage others to be generous, too.

Do you think you’ll be more likely to highlight other people’s good deeds after hearing these stories, knowing that I felt good after sharing them? We plan to explore this sort of question in future research. Until then, if you feel the urge to share a story about your own good deed, but you run into that icky feeling, consider spotlighting someone else’s altruism instead. Those are likely to be good deeds you can feel good about sharing.

https://www.yahoo.com/health/your-body/oral-health/articles/dentists-reveal-time-brush-teeth-110000945.html

Dentists Reveal The Right Time To Brush Your Teeth In The Morning—And It’s Not When You Think

https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/do_couples_with_similar_personalities_have_happier_relationships

Do Couples With Similar Personalities Have Happier Relationships? A new study suggests that when it comes to relationship happiness, your own personality matters more than your partner’s.