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With our news media constantly reporting random cruelties and senseless acts of violence, it is a relief to turn to the following article spotted on an American computer network. It originated in Glamour magazine (USA) and was monitored for the Institute by Chris Welch.
It's a crisp winter day in San Francisco. A woman in a red Honda, Christmas presents piled in the back, drives up to the Bay Bridge tollbooth. 'I'm paying for myself, and for the six cars behind me,' she says with a smile, handing over seven commuter tickets.
One after another, the next six drivers arrive at the tollbooth, dollars in hand, only to be told, 'Some lady up ahead already paid your fare. Have a nice day.'
The woman in the Honda, it turned out, had read something on an index card taped to a friend's refrigerator: 'Practise random kindness and senseless acts of beauty.' The phrase seemed to leap out at her, and she copied it down.
Judy Foreman spotted the same phrase spray-painted on a warehouse wall a hundred miles from her home. When it stayed on her mind for days, she gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down. 'I thought it was incredibly beautiful,' she said, explaining why she's taken to writing it at the bottom of all her letters, 'like a message from above.'
Her husband Frank liked the phrase so much that he put it up on the wall for his seventh graders, one of whom was the daughter of a local columnist. The columnist put it in the paper, admitting that though she liked it, she didn't know where it came from or what it really meant.
Two days later, she heard from Anne Herbert. Tall, blonde and forty, Herbert lives in Marin, one of the country's ten richest counties, where she house-sits, takes odd jobs and gets by. It was in a Sausalito restaurant that Herbert jotted the phrase down on a paper place mat, after turning it around in her mind for days.
'That's wonderful!' a man sitting nearby said, and copied it down carefully on his own place mat.
'Here's the idea,' Herbert says. 'Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly.'
Her own fantasies include: breaking into depressing-looking schools to paint the classrooms; leaving hot meals on kitchen tables in the poor parts of town; slipping money into a proud old woman's purse.
'Kindness can build on itself as much violence can.'
Says Herbert, 'kindness can build on itself as much violence can.'
Now the phrase is spreading, on bumper stickers, on walls, at the bottom of letters and business cards. And as it spreads, so does a vision of guerrilla goodness.
'The phrase is spreading, on bumper stickers, on walls, at the bottom of letters and business cards. And as it spreads, so does a vision of guerrilla goodness
In Portland, Oregon, a man might plunk a coin into a stranger's meter just in time. In Patterson, New Jersey, a dozen people with pails and mops and tulip bulbs might descend on a rundown house and clean it from top to bottom while the frail elderly owners look on, dazed and smiling. In Chicago, a teenage boy may be shovelling off the driveway when the impulse strikes. What the hell, nobody's looking, he thinks, and shovels the neighbour's driveway too.
It's positive anarchy, disorder, a sweet disturbance. A woman in Boston writes 'Merry Christmas!' to the tellers on the back of her cheques. A man in St Louis, whose car has just been rear-ended by a young woman, waves her away, saying, 'It's a scratch. Don't worry.'
Senseless acts of beauty spread: a man plants daffodils along the roadway, his shirt billowing in the breeze from passing cars. In Seattle, a man appoints himself a one man vigilante sanitation service and roams the concrete hills collecting litter in a supermarket cart. In Atlanta, a man scrubs graffiti from a green park bench.
They say you can't smile without cheering yourself up a little - likewise, you can't commit a random act of kindness without feeling as if your own troubles have been lightened if only because the world has become a slightly better place.
'Like all revolutions, guerrilla goodness begins slowly, with a single act'
And you can't be a recipient without feeling a shock, a pleasant jolt. If you were one of those rush-hour drivers who found your bridge fare paid, who knows what you might have been inspired to do for someone else later? Wave someone on in the intersection? Smile at a tired clerk? Or something larger, greater? Like all revolutions, guerrilla goodness begins slowly, with a single act. Let it be yours.
Anne Herbert, PO Box 5408, Mill Valley, California 94942, USA.
Conari, the publishers of an anthology of Random Acts of Kindness, organised a National Random Acts of Kindness Day on February 17th, 1995. The US Congress also declared the week of February 12th Random Acts of Kindness Week. It is understood that there are plans to repeat the exercise.
For further details of new books from Conari and of the further progress of the Random Acts of Kindness movement, see www.conari.com or www.acts of kindness.org. A related article, Random acts of kindness day, also has more details of the movement's progress.
The Generosity Game
The following concept, created by John Stoner (and monitored for the Institute by Matthew Mezey) has many similarities with the Random Kindness approach.
Here's another possibility, close to my own heart: the Generosity Game! It's my own project, and you can see the website if you haven't already (at http://www.generosity.org).
For those who haven't seen it the idea is this:
You do something good for someone, and you do it anonymously. For example, you could pay the toll of the car behind you at a tollbooth. One thing we've done is go to a wonderful bakery, and buy a treat for the next person who walks in the door after we leave. Be creative!
And you pass on one of these cards to the person you do it for. On one side, they say
'It's Your Turn.'
On the other, they give these instructions:
'This is for you! Now it's your turn: go do something good for someone else. Do it anonymously. Pass on this card.'
So, you see, the card passes itself on! Someone is the recipient of your good deed (and the card), goes and does something for someone else, passes on the card. Then that person has some good thing done for them (and gets a card), and they do something for someone else ... isn't it great?
Anyway, I've found that doing this a lot does open your heart in a particular way. It opens your heart to being generous with others as a part of your life, and it opens your mind to what resources you can bring to that generosity.
Honestly, I've been very weak in taking it on as a personal practice. But the few times a week (or month) that I do it myself have turned my attention more towards what I have to give. Which I'd say is a positive thing.
I'd actually like this thing to outlive me. You can compare this idea to the idea of money: the Generosity Game is actually the opposite of money. In using money, there is exchange: I give you money, you give me a product or service. In the Generosity Game, I give you a card, I give you a product or service (or do something generally good for you.) In both cases there is circulation, but Generosity Game cards circulate with the flow of products or services not against them.
The idea of money is a very old idea. It's been around what, 6,000, 8,000 years? Now wouldn't it be great if the Generosity Game lasted that long? If it became a part of as many cultures as money has? I don't expect it to take over the world like money has, but I don't think it has to in order to change the world.
John Stoner, The Generosity Game (e-mail jstoner@generosity.org; web http://www.generosity.org).
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