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There was a phenomenon created in San Francisco and Berkeley, California in 1982 when Anne Herbert, a writer for The Whole Earth Review, coined the phrased "random kindness and senseless acts of beauty." Generally, these were surprise acts that people performed for others with no apparent reason for the act but the kindness in their hearts. Here are a few simple suggestions, co-mingled with acts that would take more than a little effort, all to make society better: |
T H I N G S to D O
1. Do something nice for someone each day; make someone happy; create a list of your own to use as a guide of things to do.
2. Feed a hungry person; give $20 to a homeless person; or pay the waitress in a restaurant for the meal of a person across the room from you anonymously.
3. Give the coat off your back to someone shivering in the cold or your umbrella to someone getting wet in the rain.
4. Drive a homeless person to a shelter.
5. Include at least one person of a different ethnic background in your next lunch or party or other social event that you might not have one ordinarily.
6. Make sure persons of different backgrounds are included in your celebrations such as Martin Luther King Day, Columbus Day, Bastille Day, Cinco de Maya, St. Patrick's Day, etc. as well as taking membership in civic organizations that promote diversity.
7. If you are an employer, hire to diversify on purpose; take a person of diverse background to church, picnics, camping, tennis, skiing, fishing, galleries, theater, movie,etc. This changes the way you see each other and subsequently your behavior.
8. Adopt a graduate student, foreign or domestic; or adopt a family, foreign , immigrant or domestic; include them in your celebrations, rituals and especially holidays which can be a time when they are feeling especially lonely. Make them a natural and genuine part of your family's activities.
9. Give a bouquet of flowers to a stranger on the street.
10. Add money to a parking meter about to expire.
11. Let someone have the right of way entering a parkway or street.
12. Let someone move in front of you at the checkout line in the grocery store.
13. Pay for some else's ticket in line for the movie show.
14. Give your seat on the bus or metro subway to a person in need.
15. Open the door for someone; anyone, man or woman. Say thank you often.
16. Leave change in a vending machine "coin return receptacle" or insert the required amount of money for a purchase into the machine and leave it there.
17. Leave a dollar bill in the pathway or sidewalk for the next pedestrian that comes along.
Something to think about:
"Anything you want there to be more of, do it randomly. Don't wait for reasons. It will make itself be more, senselessly." (Anne Herbert)
Resources:
1. Book: "Random Kindness and Senseless Acts of Beauty" by Anne Herbert and Margaret M. Pavel (Berkeley, Whole Earth Review)
2. Book: "Random Acts of Kindness" by Will Glenon (Conari Press, San Francisco, $8.95)