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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

Jim Farina
Thirty over Fifty
4 min readJan 14, 2025

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Photo by Andre Ouellet on Unsplash

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…

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Thirty over Fifty
Thirty over Fifty

Published in Thirty over Fifty

Forum by Grace Mary Power, for writers aged 45 years and over, to add their voices. No political stories/articles accepted, please read the Submission Guidelines. Readers & Followers of all ages are welcome to read.

Jim Farina
Jim Farina

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