Developing compassion for yourself and others often saves lives including your own

 There is something I was taught in Tibetan Buddhism which is Right mindfulness.

It basically means to be intelligent, compassionate and pragmatic about everything you think or do.

The reason for doing this actually is it saves both your life and others lives along the way.

The basis of all civilization is kindness.

In other words: "I help you and you help me whenever you can."

What goes around comes around.

If you haven't seen this in life already, you will.

Whenever you help another person often they are aware of it at the time. Or often they will be aware of 

it later if they are particularly stressed when you help them.

Understanding how people help people all over the world is how we all survive helps everyone too.

Some people think: "I'm alone here and no one is helping me at all."

But, how about the people at the gas station making sure you have gas to drive your car or how about 

the people that work at your grocery store making sure you have food to buy there so you can eat.

And as you buy that gas and that food it allows them to continue to help you stay alive and move around too.

Helping each other is how we all survive and often money is how we continue to help each other survive our lives too.

The following is a true story about when my older children were still little.

It was winter and the roads were covered with snow. It was the early 1980s and we were all living (wife and I and older children remotely on our land in a home I had built there. The fan belt broke on my car and it wasn't drivable without another fan belt. We were about 10 miles from home which was too far for the kids to walk in 20 degrees Fahrenheit to get warm again. A man with Alaska plates on his truck stopped to help us and I told him I needed a fan belt. he looked behind his seat of his truck and found one that would fit my car. Then also he had tools and he put on this old fan belt on my car. I asked him how much I owed him for this and he said to me: "I"m from Alaska and if we didn't help each other we would all die up there in that weather. Just help the next person in trouble that you see that needs help. Pass it on."

So, I did as he recommended and helped the next person I saw in trouble that I could help and we drove our car the next 15 miles from town already being 10 miles from our remote land and house then at about 20 degrees Fahrenheit with the wind blowing there in the Mt. Shasta area of California.