Monday, April 6, 2009

Secret Deeds


I can't remember where I saw this done... there have been a couple of blogs I've seen it done on lately. Ironically, I'm about to post something cool as a "good deed" and not give either of them credit, so that makes me feel crummy. Hopefully me just saying a BIG THANK YOU WHOEVER YOU ARE will make up for it. If they stumble down this blind alley (which is unlikely) they will know who they are.

Anyway, I was doing a "secret deed" tonight -- a good deed done in a way that is never told and, in the case of mine, probably will not even be noticed. After I did it I was thinking, this would be cool to blog about and then realized it would sound like I was tooting my own horn. In fact, all I really wanted to do is convey another way we can "distribute kindness" that we easily minimize in our own minds but that can be very touching to another person. Never underestimate the power of a good deed, no matter how tiny it seems to you.

All that said, here is what I'd like us to do. Leave a comment ANONYMOUSLY and tell me a secret deed you have done or if you've had one done for you, tell that. Please do it anonymously. This is a way to confess your nifty secret good deed without actually getting any credit for it whatsoever, therefore it's not actually bragging. Make sense??

Any comments made on this post, even if not secret (like a response to another comment) should be done ANONYMOUSLY. Let's just all pretend we are sitting in a dark room talking. And please... keep your hands to yourself. :D

(If you have fun with this one, let me know. Maybe we can do it as a regular feature. Also, my secret deed may or may not be in there. You'll just have to wonder!)

[photo credit: Katie Tegtmeyer]

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Throughout the year I buy extra hygiene and paper products whenever I find them on sale. By December I have enough to last an old neighbor of mine, a single mother of five daughters, for an entire year. I drop it off on her back porch just before I know she gets home from work. Been doing it for 7 years and have never been caught. This is my first time speaking about it.

Anonymous said...

I like your idea. Someone gave me a wonderful gift of a compliment. He said, totally out of the blue, "The word for you is compassion. You are such a compassionate person." It was a good deed, because his words will stay with me and continue to inspire me to be worth his words. You never know what effect you will have on someone.

Anonymous said...

On countless occasions, I've risked life and limb (or at least accusations of attempted auto theft) by opening the doors of stranger's parked cars to TURN OFF THEIR HEADLIGHTS! Used to happen more in the olden days, before cars turned off their OWN. (Kinda miss those days.)

Anonymous said...

I work in an office with a lot of people where I have access to a lot of documents on a server. When I notice someone has made typos in their documents I secretly go edit the docs to fix the mistakes.

Sherryberry said...

Thats a wonderful idea.

Anonymous said...

The family three doors down from me are always in a bind financially. One a month I take groceries and leave them on the porch just a little before they get home. They have a 9 year old child and I always make sure there is something special for her in the bags. I can see her porch from my kitchen window and I love watching the little girl dance around when she sees the things on the porch. That is worth all the money in the world, to see the joy of a happy child.

Anonymous said...

You know those jars that ask for spare change to go to good causes? So I've been accumulating a whole lot of pennies, nickels & dimes lately...and have been wanting to dump it all into this particular donation jar that goes to aiding disaster relief...but the problem is, not only is it in a very public location, but it's at my workplace...and I don't want to seem like a big show-off coming in and dumping in all this spare change for charity right in front of everyone. So I've been watching for an opportunity to do this on the sly, when no one was around to witness my good deed. Tonight I finally succeeded in doing just that. :D

Anonymous said...

Matthew 6:1

Anonymous said...

There's a bridge in my town covered in tacky spray paint (not worthy of the name graffiti). There is profanity and even a wonderful illustration of copulation...well not anymore! Myself and a friend bought paint and all the fixings and spent an afternoon giving the columns a makeover. It felt nice to do that for the whole community.

Anonymous said...

I parked next to a car at Wal-Mart with a broken window. The car was older and seemed to belong to an employee because it was parked at the edge of the lot alongside some other older cars. I put 500.00 in an envelope and dropped it through the gap where the window wouldn't roll up.