commit random acts of kindness

I returned a dime that the automatic changer gave me in Lucky, 10 cents too much. And later that morning, I had to increase my time for the parking ticket machine; these are the kind of machine where you can’t increase your time by putting more money in – you have to get a whole new ticket. So I crammed the old ticket, which still had an hour left, into the ticket machine so that the next person could use it.

I was riding on BART, and found a woman’s wallet. Searching through all the credit cards, cash and identification, I finally found a business card. Her name wasn’t on the card, but the email address listed matched the initials on the driver’s license. So I called that number, left a message, and then emailed her from my phone.

She came over last night to my house to pick it up.

Pretty cool… I’m glad I could save her the time and effort it would take to cancel out everything and get a new DL, etc.

That’s when people will need help the most.

Leaving money in the meter. Leaving unused parking vouchers for others to use. Leaving enough room around the car even when the stupid car next to me parks too close. Opening doors for people. Saying hello and smiling to someone who looks alone and lonely.

But it’s not. I found myself wondering the other day, what can I do to make someone’s day a little happier? And it kind of has to be someone I don’t know (that’s where the random comes in). It could be opening a door for someone, paying a meter that’s about to expire, anything, I guess. This evening, while getting off a plane, I took down a bag and moved it forward four rows (with some help) to the woman I saw put it above my head in the overhead compartment one hour before.