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How “Gracious Mischief” Is Good for Both You and Your Subject
Inject some positivity into the world by performing radical acts of kindness
One winter, I got off the train and found my car buried under heavy snow. It had been snowing the whole day while I was at work. My car was in good company.
All the vehicles in the parking lot were covered with about eight inches of the blizzard's fury, and it was still coming down relentlessly as I pushed, scraped, and brushed off my windows, hood, and headlights to excavate my car. The winds are whipping the wet, powdery stuff back in my face.
It took some time and effort to clear the car off enough so that I could venture slowly through the blizzardous journey home. I thought about the people getting off the later trains and going through the same efforts to unbury their vehicles.
Wouldn't it be nice to come to my car to find that some kind soul had cleaned it off for me? Then I thought, I can do that to the car next to me. I imagined the car's owner getting off the train, dreading the task before them, and then arriving to see that somebody had mysteriously cleared their car of snow—a mystery they would never solve.
I chuckled to myself on my slow crawl home. My spirit was brightened, and so was the spirit of…