INTRODUCTION
It's not like the concept of One Good Deed needs a lot of explaining-it's an easy one to grasp: consciously try to do one small thing for someone else every single day. When I talk about it with people, I can very nearly hear the wheels turning. Interesting idea, they're thinking. Possibly even fun. Could I actually do it? And of course everyone asks me the same question: What gave me the idea to do-and then to write-One Good Deed? Where did this idea come from-and why now?
Good questions. The answer is simply that I was just feeling… a little off. For many years, I'd done a lot of volunteer and activism work, and I loved it. It made me feel happy and proud, in the simplest ways. I'm the kind of person who loves to be part of a gang, too-a team, a work family, a committee. I like being a cog in the wheel and seeing change occur.
But when I was fifty-two years old, I decided I wanted to write seriously-I had been an advertising copywriter for almost two decades, but now I really wanted to fulfill my longtime dream of writing books. I got myself a job as a bookseller during the day, and at night, I came home and wrote. So I was proud in a different way, but now my volunteering life all but disappeared. I even bowed out of chairing my college reunions, which I had been doing for thirty years. I was too busy.
But I missed helping out, in whatever guise. It started bothering me; first just a tiny bit, now and again, way in the back of my mind. Then it grew to something unnameable, a malaise, like a low-level temperature the doctor can do nothing about. And then this other thing happened. A sort of crazy thing.
We got a saint in our family.
No, really.
His name is André Bessette, and he is my aunt Tessie's great-great-uncle. She's my aunt by marriage, so technically André is not a relation, but she remembers him from her childhood and has been telling me stories about him forever. And now news had come that he was to be canonized. I mean, who has a saint in their family? Who? Even if you're not religious, stories of Brother André's life are incredible; some, myself included, would say miraculous. When I prayed over the years, I would pray through Brother André. It was easy: he was a real person to me-just a man who did extraordinary things.
So, between the no volunteering and the Brother André news, I started to think: I could be doing a little better than this. A little more each day. A little kinder, a little more helpful, a little more thoughtful. I wondered if I tried to do something nice for someone else each day, if it would change the way I was feeling. And that's when I thought of One Good Deed.
I wanted to give it a try, write it all down and see if it would inspire me; I decided to keep a blog and see if I could inspire others to join in on the deed-doing. Mostly, I wondered whether I could actually do it, and whether it would make me feel changed.
From the start I found I had to get myself in training. I tend to look at the sidewalk when I walk-a bad habit. You miss a lot that way. It means I'm looking inward, thinking about my day, my problems, whatever, while literally missing what's right in front of me. I tried actually changing my outlook by making a concerted effort to notice what was going on around me-and trying to be more observant helped my good-deeding enormously. Opportunities are often right there. Having to watch over myself, having to really pay attention to each day, was sort of like being on a diet, but in a not unpleasant way. Before long, I found I started thinking about the day's good deed as I showered, got dressed for work, and started the day. I kept a calendar, so I wouldn't forget to bring my Christmas tree to the mulchfest, attend a local fair, participate in a winter-coat drive coming up. But most of the time? I was just winging it.
Sure, there was occasional foot-dragging or a day spent prone in front of the TV, but in the main I was on it. I made a point to talk to people and snap them out of their bored reverie: cashiers, commuters, garbagemen. Most appreciated it-all seemed surprised. But I found interacting with more people who crossed my path brought more chances to make a little bit of a difference. Most times, we both left our brief encounter feeling a little bit better.
Then there were days when something someone else did was far more interesting and poignant than anything I could muster (a favorite is my friend Erika's subway hero of April 7), or I wanted to share a long-ago memory or piece of advice. You'll find those stories here, too. I worried as I kept my diary that my deeds would be repetitive, because life is repetitive. But when the year ended and I read over my adventures, I found that even if the good deed seemed familiar, the players, and the story, changed every time.
If you expect a story rife with big changes and magic bullets, this is not the book for you. As a friend said to me after following the One Good Deed blog for a few months, "It's all about critical mass." And she was right. My hope was always to do a little bit better, feel a little prouder, clock the world surrounding me a little-and to take as many people along for the ride as possible. I hoped that One Good Deed might inspire, that together our critical mass could make a difference.
Did my year make any difference at all? Well, read on, friend.
Then you tell me.
ERIN MCHUGH
New York
February 2012
