People Like To Help

People enjoy helping others.

Call me a romantic, an idealist, an optimist but I stick to my guns.

And I repeat: People have this inherent need to help others. And when they are ASKED to lend a helping hand, they do. Without hesitation, without a thought of recompense.

Sceptical of my claim? Then, spend some time playing some of the games on Facebook: Zoo World, Farmville, Cafe World, just to name a few. These are not games you play by yourself because to progress further in the game, you have to ask for help from your friends. You may initially start off by asking your real friends for help but not all your friends may play the game or respond as quickly, so you then go to the forums and befriend other players so that you could request help from them.

I was initially paranoid about befriending strangers on the internet, so I only sent friend requests to females with profile pictures that looked like it might be theirs instead of taken from some photo stock. I slowly widened my scope to males and to date I have over 400 friends from around the world. These virtual friends have been termed Facebook friends, as opposed to your real friends.

Out of the 400, I could count on around 50 whom I would call real friends. They proved themselves the very embodiment of what friends are supposed to be: someone you could count on, someone who'd help you without hesitation, at the drop of a pin, without counting the costs.

Sure, the cynics reading this might sneer: but they've only done so in a game, worse, a virtual game. It's just a game.

As one of my mentors like to say: Nothing's ever just a game. How you play the game is how you play at life. Whether you play to win, or whether you play to lose; whether you stand back, arms folded, playing at being spectator. Whether you play Win-Win or whether you play Win-Lose (you win while all others playing with you lose) - they are all mirrors of how you live your life, so announces my mentor KC See. I have seen some people take him to task over such a claim on their lives, just like I'm not too thrilled over how certain aspects of how I play the game are indications of how I live my life. But I held my tongue because he has also said: "What you argue for, you get to keep." Yikes.