【推荐1】It was a cold winter day. A woman drove up to the Rainbow Bridge tollbooth (收费站). “I’m paying for myself, and for the six cars behind me,” she said with a smile, handing over seven tickets. One after another, the next six drivers arriving at the tollbooth were informed, “Some lady up ahead already paid your fare.”

It turned out that the woman, Natalie Smith, had read something on a friend’s refrigerator: “Practice random(随意的，随机的) kindness and aimless acts of beauty.” The phrase impressed her so much that she copied it down.

Judy Foreman spotted the same phrase on a warehouse wall far away from home. When it stayed on her mind for days, she gave up and drove all the way back to copy it down. “I thought it was beautiful,” she said, explaining why she’d taken to writing it at the bottom of all her letters, “like a message from above.” Her husband, Frank, liked the phrase so much that he put it up on the classroom wall for his students, one of whom was the daughter of Alice Johnson, a local news reporter. Alice put it in the newspaper, admitting that though she liked it, she didn’t know where it came from or what it really meant.

Two days later, Alice got a call from Anne Herbert, a woman living in Marin. It was in a restaurant that Anne wrote the phrase down on a piece of paper, after turning it around in her mind for days.

“Here’s the idea,” Anne says. “Anything you think there should be more of, do it randomly.” Her fantasies (imagination) include painting the classrooms of poor schools, leaving hot meals on kitchen tables in the poor part of town, and giving money secretly to a proud old lady. Anne says, “Kindness can build on itself as much as violence can.”

The acts of random kindness spread. If you were one of those drivers who found your fare paid, who knows what you might have been inspired to do for someone else later. Like all great events, kindness begins slowly, with every single act. Let it be yours!

【推荐3】It was the most important thing in my family — my piano recital (钢琴演奏会) tonight. My grandparents were coming by plane to hear me play. Even my busy Aunt Dianne, who is on TV every night reading the news, was coming.

But one thing was for sure. I would never win an award for my piano playing. And that’s just because the more I practiced, the more nervous I got. So there I was, on the stage, in my beautiful dress, and I sat down at the piano. But when I started to play, I hit a wrong note. I told myself to start over. But then I hit the wrong note again. It was as if I hadn’t practiced at all.

Finally the disaster was over. I ran off the stage. I couldn’t understand why audience were clapping. But they were. My mom and dad had flowers for me and we were all supposed to go out for a nice dinner, but I couldn’t. I just wanted to go home and cry and never go anywhere again. After we went back home, Aunt Dianne just came in and sat down on the side of my bed.   

“It was my first night on the air,” she said. “I had never been on television before and I made a mistake. I mispronounced my name and the name of the news show. And you know what? No one even noticed but me. Just like tonight, no one noticed — just you.” Aunt Dianne was right. I think we are harder on ourselves than anyone else is. Maybe I will leave my room. And maybe I’ll play the piano again.

【推荐3】It was Williams’ mother who got her interested in reading books. A librarian, she read to her three children every day. “Not until we went to school,” Williams said. “Until we went to college.”

When Williams, now 54, became a primary school teacher in Virginia, she wanted her students to fall in love with reading just as she had. But early on, she realized that some kids had little chance to read books.

“Kids who are read to perform much better than those who are not,” she said. To Williams, the solution was simple: Give kids books. In 2017, she gave away 900 used children’s books over three days. Most people would be satisfied with that.

She said, “I wanted to do something.”

So she set a new goal for herself: Give away one million books. It sounds like an unreachable number. However, Williams posted on the Internet: “Don’t complain (抱怨) if you aren’t willing to work hard out on the field.” She got to work, first by advising friends to give away books or money to buy books. Soon, as news of Williams’ project spread, strangers started putting books in front of her door. As quickly as the books came in, Williams gave them to local schools for free.

In the four years, Williams has given away more than 78,000 books-only 922,000 more to reach her goal! And she’s not slowing down. “Reading can take you anywhere,” she said. “You can travel in time and space. If you can read, you can learn almost anything.”

【推荐2】At Christmas last year, Cathy Wood’s family home in Manchester was disturbingly quiet. Her daughters, 19 and 21, were revising for exams. She says she and her husband “hardly saw anything of them…I was a bit bored.” Bored and frustrated, she bought a 45kg bunch of secondhand clothes, without knowing what she was going to do with it.

Wood, a former teacher of English, has always loved clothes. At university, Wood hung out with the fashion students and sewed her own new romantic outfits. Wood, now 62, enjoyed shopping for vintage (老款) clothing and had even discussed getting a shop with a friend, but the rents put them off. A week or so after the bunch arrived, she booked a stall (货摊) at West Didsbury Makers Market.

Standing at her first market stall was a wholly new experience though. “It was very different from teaching. You need just the right amount of contact with people.” Wood sold four pieces at her first market, which paid for the stall and left a small surplus (盈余). Now, she sometimes returns home with 30 empty coat hangers. But it was the contact with customers and fellow traders that she found most rewarding. “It’s a lovely environment. You chat and get to know each other. I really enjoyed it.” she says.

Sometimes, in quiet moments on the stall, she takes out her mending and thinks of her mother and grandmother. “My grandmother taught art and crafts, and both she and my mother spent a lot of time with the sewing machine, teaching me to sew,” “What these clothes do is transport me back to different times when things were easier for me. They give me a pleasurable feeling. Nostalgia (怀旧) can be a good thing in that way.”

After she stopped teaching, she “started to feel like a non person”, she says. The market stall “has given me status in my own mind to be part of the community, contributing something, to be somebody people talk to, somebody people smile at.”

【推荐3】One day when I was five, my mother blamed me for not finishing my rice and I got angry. I wanted to play outside and not be made to finish eating my old rice. In my angry movement to open the screen door with my foot, I had kicked back about a12-inch part of the lower left hand corner of the new screen door. But I had no remorse, for I was happy to be playing in the backyard with my toys.

Today, I know if my child had done what I did, I would have blamed my child, and told him about how expensive this new screen door was, and I would have delivered a spanking (打屁股) for such behavior. My parents never said a word. They left the corner of the screen door be, creating an opening, a breach (窟隆) in the defense against unwanted insects.

For years, every time I saw that comer of the screen, it would constantly remind me of my mistake. For years I knew that everyone in my family would see that hole and remember who did it. For years, every time I saw a fly buzzing in the kitchen, I would wonder if it came in through the hole that I had created with my angry foot. I would wonder if my family members were thinking the same thing, silently blaming me every time a flying insect entered our home, making life more terrible for us all.

My parents taught me a valuable lesson, one that a spanking or stem (严厉的) words perhaps could not deliver. Their silent punishment for my behavior delivered a hundred stern messages to me. Above all, it has helped me become a more patient person and not burst out so easily.