Helping your fellow human beings serves like social cement.

Hence, we see in
religious traditions that acts of kindness have been integrated into their
practices, such as the Islamic zakat, Christian charity, or the Buddhist dāna. We
can be kind and helpful toward others without being people pleasers. As people
pleasing is a preoccupation with making others happy, usually at the expense of
oneself and as a means of gaining approval and validation, kindness isn’t
necessarily so. Kindness can be given without self-sacrifice, moreover, by taking
oneself into account as much as others and without expecting anything in return. We
can be kind while setting boundaries and considering our desires and needs. Another
thing we learn from Kafka’s story is that if we neglect ourselves, we eventually
lose the ability to look after others. If you’re a people pleaser (or tend to put
other people’s needs before your own), how often do you ask yourself: “What about
me?” So, what about you? What do you want? I’ve been asking this question a lot
lately: “What do I want?” not just regarding the grander scheme of things, but
particularly when it comes to little things. In the past, especially when I was
under the yoke of my father, I tended to sweep my own needs under the carpet to
accommodate someone else’s. I had great difficulty in expressing my wants and
needs. Often, I wasn’t even aware of what I wanted, and I repeatedly engaged in
activities that I essentially didn’t want to engage in. I ended up walking a path
decided by my father, which didn’t fit who I was or what I wanted, which is, of
course, a recipe for disaster. On a smaller scale, things like these happened a
lot: I went to social gatherings I didn’t want to be, associated with people I
didn’t like, even befriended, and hung out with people