Nina A. (ESE)

You just feel the need to look after someone—constantly, in fact.

Sometimes I see someone’s problems and start imagining exactly how I’m going to help them. For instance, our neighbor had a baby, and I watched the poor thing every morning searching for someone to leave the little one with just so she could run to the milk bank. I felt this overwhelming urge to help her; an image began to form in my mind of me going to get that baby formula. The centerpiece of this mental picture was my own inner sense of happiness and joy from being helpful. I was needed.

Eventually, I worked up the nerve and offered my help. I went to get the milk for about two weeks. Believe me—in my soul, that remains a warm memory for a lifetime.

Recently, an acquaintance of mine amazed me. Now, there’s a caregiver even more intense than I am! She calls me up one day and says:

"I’ve been thinking, you really ought to eat some watermelons. It’s autumn, harvest time—watermelons are great for flushing out the kidneys. You know, I’ve already pictured it all in my head: I get a man with a car to help me, I go and buy ten or fifteen watermelons for you, and then I stack them on your balcony. Oh! You won't believe it, but just imagining it made me feel so happy! If you’d like, of course, I’ll organize this for you..."

"Well," I thought, "who knows where people find their joy. Here it is—joy found in helping one’s neighbor."

Another acquaintance of mine gives gifts to almost everyone in her apartment building. Whenever New Year’s or March 8th comes around, there’s a ring at the doorbell; someone opens it, and there is a radiant, happy face holding a little gift! A gift for Apartment 15, for Apartment 17, for Apartment 11, and so on... "Wonderful people live in every single one!" she says.

Many people look at passersby and take pleasure in seeing well-dressed or attractive strangers. I rarely look at people that way. For example, if I see a girl standing in high heels, my own feet immediately begin to feel the strain of "standing" in those heels. It feels heavy. I look away. Then there’s a young girl with a bare midriff—and goosebumps run down my back from the cold. Or a slender lady walks toward me with a tightly cinched waist—my own chest feels "constricted," I can’t breathe; my body feels as if its own waist has been cinched tight.

Somewhere deep down, I pity them all—by processing these imaginary sensations through my own body, it feels to me as if they are suffering.

In my childhood, I lived in a private house. The house stood in a vast garden filled only with fruit trees and flowers. There was a sea of flowers. Even as a very small child, I used to make miniature gardens out of tiny blossoms. These little garden beds were maybe only a square meter in size, but everything in them was harmonious and beautiful. I wanted everything around the house to be extraordinary, cozy, and comfortable. I remember when I was seven or eight, I became obsessed with daisies. Immediately, all my friends and relatives found out that I needed different kinds of daisies. Someone brought them to me from the Carpathian Mountains, others brought them from their own gardens, and the result was a carpet of various daisies, stunning in its beauty, which after a couple of years covered all the soil beneath the fruit trees.

The beauty was extraordinary. Everyone from the nearby streets would pause as they walked past our garden. My greatest pleasure back then was tending to that miracle flowerbed. And then, one day, an acquaintance told me that plants breathe through their roots and that the soil needs to be loosened more often.

I ran home from school—my legs barely feeling the ground, crying. How could it be? I didn't loosen the soil often enough, which meant they were barely breathing!