To Do

Updated March 7, 2010

This was one of the original things added to the list in high school – before I even had a driver’s license, probably.

It was inspired by an article I read in Reader’s Digest about a movement taking place across the US – “Practice random acts of kindness and senseless acts of beauty”. The author had collected up stories of random kindness from all across the country. For some reason, the one that stuck with me the most was the woman who paid for herself and the five cars behind her at a toll booth.

But then last week, I saw a secret on PostSecret from a person who worked at a toll booth, confessing that when cars paid for the cars behind them, he/she just kept the money. I can’t say as I blame them – the chances are slim that anyone would ever find out and sitting in a tollbooth taking money is probably a pretty thankless and low-paying job.

The question for me is – knowing that the toll booth operator might just keep the money, do I still want to hand over extra? The answer is yes. It’s still good karma for me – and bad karma for the operator who decides to keep it.