Kindness
- August 2nd, 2011
- Posted in Share
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On a cold winter day in San Francisco, a woman drives up to the Bay Bridge tollbooth. “I’m paying for myself, and for the six car behind me,” she says. Then she smiles and hands over seven tickets. One after another, the next six divers arrive at the tollbooth, money in hand, only to be told, “Some lady up ahead already paid your toll for you. Have a nice day.”
It turned out that the woman had read something a friend had taped to her refrigerator: “Practice random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.” She liked the phrase so much that she copied it down. More and more people saw the same phrase in quite some other places. They liked it and copied it down.
Now the phrase is spreading, on walls, at the bottom of letters and business cards, in some local restaurants, and even in a newspaper. As the phrase spreads, so do people’s ideas about the kind things they can do for others.
In New Jersey, a dozen people with pails, mops, and flower seeds go to an old house and clean it while the elderly owners look on, shocked and smiling. A man plants flowers along the roadway. In Seattle, a man decides that he’s going to clean up the trash people have left on city street.
You can’t smile without cheering up a little. Similarly, you can’t commit a random act of kindness without feeling as if your own troubles have been lightened. If you were one of those drivers who found their bridge toll paid, who knows what you might do for someone else later? Wave someone on in the intersection? Smile at a tired clerk? Kindness begins slowly with a single act.
Try it.
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