Existence for This Exercise I

¶ … Existence

For this exercise I decided to practice Sonja Lyubomirsky's fourth step -- practice acts of kindness -- from her book the How of Happiness. I thought that I was going to have a hard time finding random acts of kindness to do, but surprisingly, I did not. On my morning walk with my dog, I saw that one of my neighbor's trash bins had blown over and their trash -- which was, for the most part, paper plates and cups from a barbecue or something -- was all over the streets and starting to blow away. When I initially walked by it I had some quite negative thoughts about what I saw (e.g., "Why haven't they picked this up?" "Should I do it?" "Why should I have to do it?! Gross!"). I then remembered that I was going to practice some random acts of kindness and I immediately tried to change my mindset about what I saw. I walked over to the trash bin and put it upright. I then began picking up the random pieces of trash that had blown out and threw them away. My dog was totally curious about what I was doing, but was along for the ride. I managed to pick up most of what I saw, except for the stuff that had blown down a side hill. I felt immediately better after having done this. The street looked nicer. There wasn't going to be random trash blowing all around. And the neighbors wouldn't come home to find a huge mess.

While driving in my car I tried to be especially cognizant of the people driving, riding bike, and walking around me. I stopped at all cross walks when I noticed people trying to cross (probably not a random act of kindness, but we all kind of drive on auto-pilot and sometimes I am sure that I don't see people wanting to cross). I let people over (even when they didn't signal!). I really tried to check my judgment and just allow people to do what they needed to do without feeling angry with them for doing so.

When I went to the grocery store I helped an elderly woman load her groceries into the back of the car. She was struggling with a bag of dog food and I helped her get it in the car. She was surprised by my wanting to help her, but very appreciative. As I was bringing my cart back to the location for carts, I grabbed another that was taking up a parking space and I brought it with me to the cart location. I thought someone would want to park there and wouldn't be able to because of the cart.