92 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
92 lines
4.1 KiB
Plaintext
PRACTICE
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RANDOM KINDNESS
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AND
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SENSELESS ACTS OF BEAUTY
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It's a crisp winter day in San Francisco. A woman in a red Honda,
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Christ- mas presents piled in the back, drives up to the Bay
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Bridge tollbooth. "I'm paying for myself, and for the six cars
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behind me," she says with a smile, handing over seven commuter
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tickets.
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One after another, the next six drivers arrive at the tollbooth,
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dollars in hand, only to be told, "Some lady up ahead already paid
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your fare. Have a nice day."
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The woman in the Honda, it turned out, had read something on an
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index card taped to a friend's refrigerator: "Practice random
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kindness and senseless acts of beauty." The phrase seemed to leap
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out at her, and she copied it down.
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Judy Foreman spotted the same phrase spray-painted on a warehouse
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wall a hundred miles from her home. When it stayed on her mind for
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days, she gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down. "I
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thought it was incredibly beautiful," she said explaning why she's
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taken to writing it at the bottom of all her letters, "like a
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message from above."
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Her husband, Frank, liked the phrase so much that he put it up on
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the wall for his seventh graders, one of whom was the daughter of
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a local columnist. The columnist put it in the paper, admitting
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that though she liked it, she didn't know where it came from [sic]
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or what it really meant.
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Two days later, she heard from Anne Herbert. Tall, blonde, and
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forty, Herbert lives in Marin, one of the country's ten richest
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counties, where she house-sits, takes odd-jobs, and gets by. It
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was in a Sausalito restaurant that Herbert jotted the phrase down
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on a paper place mat, after turning it around in her mind for
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days.
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"That's wonderful!" a man sitting nearby said, and copied it down
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carefully on his own placemat.
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"Here's the idea," Herbert says. "anything you think there should
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be more of, do it randomly."
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Her own fantasies include: (1) breaking into depressing-looking
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schools to paint the classrooms, (2) leaving hot meals on kitchen
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tables in the poor parts of town, (3) slipping money into a proud
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old woman's purse. Says Herbert, "kindness can build on itself as
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much as violence can." Now the phrase is spreading, on bumper
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stickers, on walls, at the bottom of letters and business cards.
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And as it spreads, so does a vision of guerrilla goodness.
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In Portland, Oregon, a man might plunk a coin into a stranger's
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meter just in time. In Patterson, New Jersey, a dozen people with
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pails and mops and tulip bulbs might descend on a run-down house
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and clean it from top to bottom while the frail elderly owners
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look on, dazed and smiling. In Chicago, a teenage boy may be
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shoveling off the driveway when the impulse strikes. What the
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hell, nobody's looking, he thinks, and shovels the neighbor's
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driveway, too.
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It's positive anarchy, disorder, a sweet disturbance. A woman in
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Boston writes "Merry Christmas!" to the tellers on the back of her
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checks. A man in St. Louis, whose car has just been rear-ended by
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a young woman, waves her away, saying, "It's a scratch. Don't
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Worry."
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Senseless acts of beauty spread: A man plants daffodils along the
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roadway, his shirt billowing in the breeze from passing cars. In
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Seattle, a man appoints himself a one man vigilante sanitation
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service and roams the concrete hills collecting litter in a
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supermarket cart. In Atlanta, a man scrubs graffiti from a green
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park bench.
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They say you can't smile without cheering yourself up a little --
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likewise, you can't commit a random act of kindeness without
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feeling as if your own troubles have been lightened if only
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because the world has become a slightly better place.
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And you can't be a recipient without feeling a shock, a pleasant
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jolt. If you were one of those rush-hour drivers who found your
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bridge fare paid, who knows what you might have been inspired to
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do for someone else later? Wave someone on in the intersection?
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Smile at a tired clerk? Or something larger, greater? Like all
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revolutions, guerrilla goodness begins slowly, with a single act.
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Let it be yours.
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Reprinted from Glamour magazine, December, 1991.
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