Lately, I've been thinking about some of my "do-gooder" policies. I'm not like the state department or something. I mean, I don't really have published policies with outlines and mission statements and all that jazz. But since I believe that people are not what we think or what we say, but what we do or create, there then has to be some kind of frame work to our lives. There have to be lines and limits for everything we decide is important, and everything that we do.

Specifically, I'm thinking of my "good deed for the day" policy. I started writing down my good deed each day as part of my New Years program for self improvement. Well, it wasn't really self improvement. It was more like self awareness. Actually, it was to have some tangible evidence in my pocket to shut up the voice in my psyche that's always telling me what a worthless human being I am. It almost always sounds similar to Sr. Lorretta's voice from Burnt Up Heart. Her favorite description of me was that I was a "disgrace to humanity".

The thing was that, although I knew it wasn't, strictly speaking, true, I know that she thought it was true. Only half of the people I ran across in childhood thought that I was without worth, a waste of time, a lost cause. How hard it must be for those people about whom EVERYONE in their life acts that way. And I knew kids like that. I knew people who, by the 8th or 9th grade had just sort of given up.

Anyway, the thing is, that I've been trying to write down my good deed every day. There are rules for me about what constitutes a good deed.

1) It has to involve some effort on my part. It doesn't have to be a herculean effort but I can't count things like letting somebody ahead of me in line at the market, or taking somebody else's stuff off the printer and dropping it off at their desk when I'm getting my own stuff off the printer and their desk is only 2 feet away from mine.

2) It has to be a positive action. I mean, it can't be that I refrained from doing something - i.e. kirking out at somebody in the grocery store even though they were behaving in a totally obnoxious way and my blood pressure went up 40 points and my jaw locked from the effort it took to keep my mouth shut.

3) It has to be "semi-secret". Obviously, somebody is going to know about it. If I have to explain to The Hub why I was late then he knows and almost all the time the person I'm doing it for knows. But the point is to just do it and shut up about it, because, after all this is what I'm SUPPOSED TO be doing. I'm only writing it down to shut up the nun that accidentally got stuck in my head for 30 years.

And, on that point, I guess I should say this: it's pretty likely that the idea that I was supposed to go out of my way to be of help or use to people was given to me by some outside influence or influences, like my family or the church. But I've had plenty of time to discard it if I'd wanted to. I've decided to keep it. Even if there is no God, no communion of saints, no karma, no reward that's great in heaven, or if there isn't even any point - so what? My paltry little good deeds are my way of giving the forces of chaos, confusion, and just plain meanness the finger. So I can't cure cancer, I'm at least qualified to tell somebody how to get to Rt. 70 if they ask me.

If I was waiting to be able to do something great, I'd never get anything done.

So after doing this for two months I've learned two things:
1) For some reason, I tend to forget about the thing right after I do it. It's like I see the opportunity, I do the deed and I tell myself "okay, that's your good deed for the day." Sometimes I say it out loud ( though under my breath. No one likes to feel that an act of kindness is actually just some kind of random insanity) and then, when I go to make my journal entry at the end of the day I sit there chewing the top of my pen and thinking "I must have done something worthwhile today. What the hell was it?" Sometimes I leave it blank and then I remember it days later!

While I know that this probably stems from the "it's what you ought to do" mentality, you'd think that since making the effort, it would at least stick in my mind for 8 hours! After all, heaven knows that if I ever lose my temper with someone I remember it for YEARS.

The Hub says that there is a "Trucking Formula" for stuff like this. It's One "Oh S***!" cancels out Ten "Atta Boys!"

2) About 25% of the time, the opportunity to do the deed presents itself to you. Somebody asks you for a favor you don't exactly have time for, or there's a person in clear need of help, direction, or a clue. But 50% of the time you have to look around for them. You have to get a little creative. And then there's another 25% of the time where you can hardly scare one up! Or you try to help somebody and they think you're setting them up to try to rob them or something. And you realize that our society isn't exactly SET UP for the free exchange of good deeds. Nobody talks to you, they don't want you to talk to them, we're all in our cars so we can only gesture at each other ( which, more often than not, leads to some other kind of misunderstanding). Moreover, we're all like little mice, each one running our own maze because we don't have TIME for anything else. From the house to the gas station, the gas station to the job the job to the market and back - maybe the gym - then home. We see people, but they don't really register with us.

For all I know, any one of my co-workers or even my neighbors could be dying of cancer, going through a terrible break up, be on the edge of a nervous breakdown, or be so lonesome they wonder if anyone would notice if their head exploded. But we all just sit here, tapping our keyboards with our headphones on "Hey, how ya doin'?" "Fine" or going out to get the mail, we nod, we wave. That's why I like to go to PetSmart. At least somebody's DOG will come up to me to start a conversation. Well, it's not much of a conversation. It's more that they can smell that I am a dog person and will scratch them behind the ears, but still, it's better than nothing. Saturday, I was in the grocery store and this man who worked there got up too quickly - he was stocking shelves - and almost passed out. I asked him if he was okay and he just kind of waved his hand an muttered at me. I didn't want to embarrass him so I left him alone. But, I thought to myself: is this place so crappy to work that he couldn't say to his boss that he needed help, or light duty, or a break or something?

It's very easy for me to reach the conclusion that my whole "Girl Scout" policy is stupid, that anything I can do is too paltry, that it isn't doing any good, that these ARE just random acts of insanity on my part, which nobody will remember and won't make any difference any way.

But, since it's become part of my nature, and I've kept it and invested in it I guess I'll just keep on keeping on with it. If it's just random insanity - at least it's a happy kind of insanity.