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Why Helping Others is Painful But Why I Won’t Stop Doing It
Caring can be an underrated form of courage in the world we live in
What’s your most courageous moment? Mine involves standing outside an apartment door in Vienna. I was 24. The thoughts kept swirling in my head like a storm-if I rang the bell and went inside, there was a good chance I wasn’t coming out the same way I’d gone in. Maybe I’d not come out at all. It’d be better to cut your losses, no? Call it a day and leave. That was one thought. A girl in fashionable clothes, laughing in a carefree manner. My lecturer’s voice, still so clear in memory: ‘What are you ready to do for the story?’ Those were other thoughts. I knew that this was my vocation but more than that, I knew there was someone in there who needed my help. I was a journalist. And I was a human. Taking a deep breath, I pressed the button.
This isn’t the first time I helped someone. But I’ve been lucky that I’ve not often been called to go to extreme lengths. Yet it’s not only the things we do but the things we find we are willing to do for others that shake us up. So I found out, hand gripping a broom handle, watching the door lock twist from the outside, my housemate next to me whispering of jumping out the window. (It turned out to be an honest mistake by a drunken fellow student who had mistaken our house…
