Paying it Forward

By an odd coincidence (group-mind still seems to be in effect), I was fulfilling the following meme last week (pinched from the_exclamation. But since I had gotten a late start of it, I propose to re-issue it to you all. And if it had been issued to you already, so what? More good can be distributed to the world at large.

=======the_exclamation writes:================
You do want to make the world a better place, right? Chances are, if you read this column, then the answer is Yes.

So I have a proposal for you. I have a plan to accomplish this, and I am going to put it into motion. With this plan, in eight days, that is by end of day next Sunday, I will have made the world a better place, simply by following this plan.

I will tell you my plan, and pledge to see it through, and post the results here next Monday morning.

And I would like you to respond to this column and take the pledge with me, then describe your results in next week's column (Note: just post it back in this journal eight days from now).

Now I warn you: What I am proposing is not going to be easy. It may even meet with resistance, from persons who might misunderstand your actions.

These people are precisely the reason this is necessary. They need your help.

So, are you with me? Are you going to do the same thing I am, and together we will make the world a better place?

I knew you would. So here's the plan:

It's Sunday morning. I pledge that, by Sunday evening next week, I will have done something nice for five strangers.

Five in eight days. When you think about it, five acts of kindness in more than one week is an appallingly low number.

But as I cautioned, this is not going to be easy. Those people I mentioned above, the ones who might - I'm not saying they will, mind, I'm saying they might - misunderstand your actions? They have learned that when people appear to be nice, it's usually because they've figured out how to turn it to their own advantage. Strangers cannot be trusted.

Many people have received this message. And it is the wrong lesson. It leaves out the good. Harmful behaviour, in this sense, is like the drop of chocolate ice cream in the vanilla, changing the colour of everything.

But the thing we must always keep in mind is the power of inertia. Just as things annoy you more easily when you're already cranky, so does a feeling of joy cause you to shrug off minor unpleasantries for the irrelevancies they are, and celebrate the simple things around you that you might otherwise take for granted.

So I'm going to do something nice this week for five people I don't even know. It can be anything: Compliment their hair, let them pass first in a checkout line, offer them my seat on the bus. Five people. Anything at all, no matter how small.

The only criterion is they have to notice. They have to perceive that a stranger did something he was under absolutely no obligation to do - for them. And even if they're not immediately appreciative, somewhere down the line they might do something nice for someone else, because you stemmed their negativity by the tiniest fraction, but it was enough.

And if you've been paying attention to these columns you will have realised I expect that, through doing nice things for people, we will stay positive, and make ourselves happier as well. Yes, I'm shamelessly maniupulating you into being happier; I admit that.

So maybe those hypothetical misunderstanders above do have a point about all of us standing to benefit.

'course, when you make the world a better place like that, everybody benefits.