Zhang San is a young man with a warm-hearted and kind personality. He is always willing to help and often does not hesitate to lend a helping hand and help others with their difficulties. When his friend Li Si asked him for help, Zhang San also chose to help the other party as soon as possible.
At that time, Li Si had just owered a loan shark, and since he could not repay it, the creditor threatened to take his property. Li Si panicked and looked around for relatives and friends who could borrow money.
In the end, he found Zhang San. Li Si cried about his predicament, hoping that Zhang San could lend him a sum of money to tide over the difficulties.
After listening to Li Si's explanation, Zhang San immediately expressed his willingness to help. Although his savings were not much, Zhang San still lent all his savings to Li Si without saying a word.
In Zhang San's opinion, friends who have known each other for many years are in trouble, and of course they should come forward to help.
However, what Zhang San didn't expect was that a year later, Li Si not only did not pay off the loan, but came to ask Zhang San again to borrow more money. Only then did Zhang San realize that his kindness and trust had been used and abused by Li Si.
In desperation, Zhang San could only cut off contact and chose to give up recovering the money.
This incident gave Zhang San a lot of inspiration. He understands that helping others without principles and bottom lines will only make them develop the Xi of dependence and exploitation. From then on, when Zhang San helps others, he will definitely set clear boundaries to avoid the abuse of the help, which will lead to rebellion or disaster.
Wang Wu, an old classmate of Zhang San, recently had a rift in his relationship with his wife. Wang Wu and his wife often quarrel and shout over some trivial family matters, and even fight over a trivial matter.
Wang Wu's face was already full of fatigue. He approached Zhang San to discuss, hoping to get some advice and help.
Zhang San was also very nervous after listening to Wang Wu's story. He and Wang Wu grew up together, and they are also quite concerned about whether their old friends can save this marriage. In Zhang San's view, family harmony is the most important thing, since the relationship between the two people is still there, there is always a way to resolve differences.
Therefore, he offered to come up with ideas for Wang Wu.
But when Zhang San learned about the trivial quarrel between the old husband and wife, he also realized that it was too private and complicated. Although I have a lot of ideas, directly interfering too much in other people's family affairs will often add fuel to the fire and cause greater contradictions and conflicts.
So Zhang San chose to restrain himself appropriately. He took more of a listening to Wang Wu and giving the necessary comfort and encouragement rather than directly offering advice.
For some questions that are too private, Zhang San is also careful to avoid asking or commenting. He understands that family affairs are private and difficult for outsiders to fully participate in or change.
In the end, with Zhang San's listening and encouragement, Wang Wu gradually figured out some questions. He re-examined his actions and adopted some of Zhang's suggestions.
The old couple and wife finally regained their smiles and reunited.
This experience also taught Zhang San to be measured. To help people, you must know how to advance and retreat, and you can't interfere too much in family affairs. This kind of sensible and moderate help is often the easiest to succeed.
After experiencing the two lessons of helping Li Si and Wang Wu, Zhang San also has a deeper understanding of the life value of "helping others". He found that there were certain blind spots in his previous way of helping others, often focusing on "helping others" one-sidedly, while ignoring the potential risk of "there will be disasters".
ZHANG SAN METH INTROSPECTIVELY BELIEVES THAT THIS STEMS FROM THE UNCHANGING ENTHUSIASM IN HIS CHARACTER. He was always helpful and often did not hesitate to lend a hand, but did not deeply consider whether his help was appropriate, which led to the result of being used by Li Si and offending Wang Wu's privacy.
After thinking about it, Zhang San understood that some radical acts of kindness would also bring harm. For example, unprincipled repayment of debts for Li Si, not only lost his wife and broke the army, but also developed Li Si's bad Xi of borrowing debts; Another example is to persuade Wang Wu's family affairs, although the intention is good, but interfering too much in other people's private lives is often easy to cause unnecessary contradictions, and even destroy the friendship between each other.
Therefore, Zhang San is determined to change his previous blind and enthusiastic style. He formulated a series of new principles for helping others: first, before providing help, you must carefully judge the other person's situation and determine whether your help is appropriate and needed; Secondly, you need to clearly define the scope and duration of your help to avoid making the other party rely on you without a bottom line; Finally, it is necessary to pay attention to controlling the degree of interference with the privacy of others.
According to these principles, Zhang San has helped many people who have encountered setbacks and difficulties, and has achieved good results. For example, in the face of Zhao Liu, who failed the graduate school entrance examination, he mainly helped Zhao Liu regain his strength through companionship and encouragement, and finally Zhao Liu found a new direction in life; For example, Du Qi and his wife, who faced emotional problems, Zhang San only occasionally gave some opinions, and more let Du Qi examine and solve the problem by himself, and the relationship between the couple was rebuilt.
Zhang San found that using these principled ways to help others can not only avoid being used and causing trouble, but also maximize the effect of one's kindness and help more people who really need help to tide over difficulties and regain hope.
This also enabled Zhang San to achieve a smarter balance between helping others and protecting himself.
Through this series of helping experiences, Zhang San finally understood what it really means to "help others". This is not only based on pure enthusiasm, but also requires the cooperation of prudent judgment and control to grasp the boundaries and control the proportions.
Perhaps, as "The Mean" says, "gentleness, courtesy, and frugality" is the best way to deal with others. Helping others wisely and modestly is the life goal that Zhang San strives to pursue from now on.