THE WORLD WE LIVE IN: operation nice

Perhaps you have already heard about Operation Nice. I hope so because it is just so fundamentally good and easy and wonderful that is deserves your attention. Listen to this:

"The other day I was waiting for an elevator in my building with one other gentleman. As the elevator arrived, I hesitated. I usually let others enter first, as a courtesy. But this gentleman held out his hand, motioning me to the door. As I walked through, he said with a chuckle, "You didn't really think I was going to walk in here first, did you?" I responded, "Well, I don't like to take anything for granted nowadays." That one minor gesture brightened my day! I started to think, "What a great world this would be if everyone had consideration for others." It's a shame that that's not the case currently. It's obvious that common courtesy is lacking in society today. Just drive down a major highway and you'll see that.What we all need is a little NICE.Operation NICE encourages individuals to be proactively NICE. Stop by to read some positive, upbeat news stories (yes, they exist) about nice people. Download some tools (coming soon!) to help you in your quest to communicate the concept of niceness. Share a story or two about how someone made your day."

I've been reading this blog for awhile, and try to incorporate the philosophy into my everyday life as much as possible. But I've neglected to try any of the assignments and tasks Melissa offers up as ways to be thoughtful of how we treat others. But then my friend Teresa motivated me to do the weekly Nice Assignments, and I'm going to do it. It'll be good for me and in turn be good for others (or that is the idea at least!).

That said, I'm not doing this week's assignment (they are published weekly on Mondays). The assignment this week is to donate blood. I used to donate blood regularly. In fact, somewhere I have a little blood drop pin they gave me for donating so much. But the problem is that I get very woozy and sometimes pass-out after giving blood. I'm not scared of needles or the pain. I eat and drink plenty before the appointment and then snack on the cookies and juice boxes the nice old lady volunteers give you. After one particular appointment, I remember walking into the bathroom (this was about 45 minutes after the needle was removed). The next thing I recall is waking up on a gurney in the Red Cross room with an ice pack on my head. A little embarassing. If it weren't for the fact that I can't possibly trust myself to drive home following blood donation, I would still donate and risk head injury.

So in place of giving away my blood, Captain and I bought some canned goods and donated them to our local food pantry today. Still pretty Nice I think, and hopefully I can jump in with the weekly assignments next week.