Would You Be Happier If You Sometimes Put Yourself Last?

A growing number of studies reveals that being good actually does you good. Performing selfless acts is purported to improve your emotional health, boost your cardiovascular system and even make you happier. But is altruism all it’s cracked up to be when you’re a terminally jaded writer with anger-management issues? Ben Smithurst investigates whether it’s really cool to be kind.

- Ben Smithurst

Are you a good person?

I think I’m pretty nice. Or I thought I was. So, when I was commissioned for this piece (“You need to be good for three weeks to a month, the longer the better; give money to beggars, volunteer at a soup kitchen, help old ladies across the road”) I was slightly worried. How much nicer can I possibly be? Or, at least, be without becoming very dull? (Nice people are mostly dull. This is why Anh Do is brilliant when he paints and cries, but a terrible comedian.) I already help mates move, surrender my bus seat to the infirm, get my shout in. I’m the one – me! – who gets up to comfort our one-year-old when he wakes in the night, screaming like a baby Jimmy Barnes who’s caught his head in a gate. I recycle. I bought a KeepCup. It’s around here somewhere. Maybe in the cupboard. I’m practically a saint.

But then I tell my wife about the piece. “Ooh,” she says, “that’s hard. You can be pretty selfish.” 

“What? No I can’t. You can!” 

“Babe.”

“I let people in traffic. You don’t even drive!”

“No,” she says, “You swear at everyone. You have terrible road rage, it’s scary. You only ever do what you want to do. We hardly ever see my friends.” 

“But they’re bor–”

“You won’t go out unless it’s to the pub across the road. You only holiday where there’s surf. You went on a surf trip when I was seven months pregnant! Surfing is a selfish sport. And you have to ‘win’ every conversation. You’re doing it now.”

“That’s not… oh.”