Parking Meters

Over the weekend I have done smaller acts of kindness. Every time I have seen an empty meter I have put a quarter in it (twenty minutes). This I want to believe has helped.
In the books and articles I have read so far they have talked about choosing how you perceive the act has helped or what it has given the reciever. In the book, A Short Course in Kindness: a little book on the importance of love and the relative unimportance of everything else, by Margot Silk Forrest she explains that we should be able to perceive how our acts have helped. She says, of her own gift to a homeless man, "I was not only able to choose what to do, I was able to choose how I felt about it. I had the power to decide that my gift would be used well." She also talks about how maybe the act would not be used well but she says, "does it matter? Not if I have chosen what I will take away from the experience: a sense of accomplishment at having taken right action" (59).
I choose to believe that my actions have helped. You never know when that City of Evanston (or whatever city you live in) parking person will come and give you a $10 ticket, maybe more, for having run out of time. And to think that you have to pay that for what could have been an extra twenty-five cents put into the meter, so that is what I have done to hopefully allow a person to not pay that $10. I did not necessarily get that same level of happiness that I did from putting up the signs, but it was great to know that I helped someone in a smaller way, and it only took about a minute. This is what I hope to teach and learn, that kindness can come in the littlest of ways and still have a big impact.