1) Your humanity and self-respect. It feels damnably good to know you've done something to help someone who needed it.

2) Serendipity. Maybe, just maybe, that person that you reach out to will somehow bless your life. Maybe they'll bite you. It's all experience, and a yarn to tell at the least.

I don't think that it's that people expect something in return, it's that society has increasingly pushed in the direction of passive consumption, of observation, of spectacle, and the actions of others on a flickering screen providing the ersatz satisfaction of actual action.

I witness this variety of thing all too frequently - someone's in trouble, and a crowd stands, and watches, much as they would the same events on television.

I can at least live in good conscience that I always step in to help, consequences be damned - and yes, I've had my share of negative consequences - lawsuit from a girl who was being beaten senseless by her "man", for intervening and causing her to scrape her knee (never mind the blood gushing from her face by the time I showed up) - lawsuit from a guy who had an epileptic fit, and I phoned for an ambulance, resulting in him being arrested on an outstanding warrant - and arrest and a broken nose for breaking up a bar-fight. Plenty else too, but those were the major ones.

Such is life, but I couldn't live with myself if I didn't.