When the rockets' red glare of fireworks lit up our nation's skies earlier this month, we celebrated all the freedoms we enjoy because of acts of heroism by soldiers long since gone. It also brings to mind acts of battlefield heroism that occur daily in cities and lands that, a year ago, we couldn't pronounce or point to on a map.

But heroism certainly is not limited to war time. Every day we read or hear tales of heroism, large and small. What is the impulse that inspires heroism, to set aside one's personal needs, and even life, for the needs of others?

It has its roots in altruism. The Oxford English Dictionary defines altruism as "devotion to the welfare of others, regard for others, as a principle of action; opposed to egoism and selfishness."

Altruism, though, isn't seen only in grand gestures of heroism. Each time any of us is moved to act on the behalf of others, we are being altruistic. Every parent who has sat up through the night with a sick child; every pet owner who embarks on a costly treatment for an ailing "furry" child; every volunteer who helps build a house for or feed the homeless, is expressing altruism.

Heroes of Another Breed

In June, when Bodhi, Sassy, Smigens, and Lady greeted the first M.D. Anderson patient to participate in the W.A.G.S. (Welcoming Animals in Giving Support) pilot program, they wagged in unison for a young man in a wheel chair.

He was recovering from surgery that removed 10 tumors from his spinal cord, and he became the recipient of the "devotion to the welfare of others" called altruism.

Next came a teenaged boy having his second round of treatments for bone cancer and a little girl clinging to her mother as they pushed the I.V. pole into the physical therapy room where the dogs waited to be brushed, hugged, walked, and held.

"They're on the battlefield, in the grocery store, holding a gun or just holding a door. And when we act heroically, in ways both great and small, it is ourselves that we save."

The University of Texas M.D. Anderson Cancer Center, one of the largest hospitals in the nation, has 1,600 on-site volunteers, all but 20 or so being the two-legged kind. Simple math makes it obvious that there are millions of people in this country and countless others around the world who are altruistic at least some of their time on earth.

Why is that? There must be something of benefit to us that it is such a universal need to put others before ourselves. The common response people give to volunteering is, "Oh, I get so much more back than I give." Why is that? What is happening in our brain, body and psyche, that we indeed do find that it is better to give than receive? One finding is that being of service gives meaning to life.

Saving Your Own Life Through Others

Viktor Frankl, a psychiatrist who lived more than 50 years after surviving imprisonment in two concentration camps, came out convinced that meaning and purpose in life saved him and will keep anyone alive, regardless of the hardship, if held onto.

Frankel said, "Every situation implies a call, a responsibility. To this call we must react according to our best ability and our best conscience. During the three years I spent in Auschwitz and Dachau I decided that I was responsible for making use of the slightest chance of survival and ignoring the great dangers around me."

Frankl concluded that, in the end, "to use your suffering to help others is.the highest of all meanings." (From Blair Justice's A Different Kind of Health , pp. 59, 159).

Imaging Selflessness

With the impressive power now of neuroimaging instrumentation to peer inside our brains, including the "unconscious" parts of who we are, we are learning more about what is in our head and heart when we are being altruistic. Studies show that when we do for others what they need (not what we want to give), we, in turn, feel good.

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio is convinced that joy comes when we do something that gives our brain and body a sense of equilibrium, which altruistic behavior induces. PET scans, which measure blood flow, show significant increases in brain activity, particularly in the left hemisphere. The hypothalamus, in the limbic (emotional) system, also registers increased blood flow, and helps brings autonomic balance between the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems.

The bottom-line internal message sent to us via our mental monitoring is one of harmony, of contentment and "all is well."

Our cardiac muscle, with its own "brain" of 40,000 neurons, picks up the message, moves into a healthy heart rate variability and synchronizes with the slower brain wave pattern being transmitted.

This "feel good" experience is what many hospital volunteers experience. The four-legged creatures who are among them signal their joy in tail wags.

Tashi, who is a "caring critter" at Methodist Hospital, brought joy to his master by helping bring a stroke patient out of a deep depression. She was a middle-aged woman whose brain was damaged in the language area.

In the fifth floor rehabilitation therapy room, the woman brushed the rich fur of the Tibetan terrier, first with a brush, then with her hand. A physical therapist kept asking her, "What does it feel like? What does it feel like?" Softly but distinctly, the patient answered, "Soft!" It was her first word in a month, and a turning point in her recovery.

The woman, the technician, not to mention Tashi's master, glowed. This is the joy of harmony that altruism sends through the body and comes out in a big smile on the faces of both two-and four-legged sentient beings.

So acts of heroism, both great and small, happen every day. For many hospital volunteers, who have experienced cancer or other serious illness, they know what it is like to be a patient in the bed as well as a helper by the bed. Their service is defined formally as altruism.

But to them, it is simply giving back.

UPDATED: 7-29-2004

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