Random toll booth
Over a given holiday my wife and I do a fair amount of driving as we are headed to see different members of our family spread out all across the United States. You are bound to hit a toll booth at some point if you drive long enough. One random act of service that my wife and I do on road trips is to pay for the car behind us. Seems like a relatively gesture, you scramble to find the exact change needed for the toll. You’re ripping out the “cash tray” and stuffing your fingers down into the depths of the seats trying to find just one more quarter. You gather up the necessary amount just as the toll booth attendant stretches out her hand and fork over the money. We’ve all been there.
Well how nice is it to receive a gift when you aren’t expecting it? What if you still go through the spare change collection ritual before approaching the toll and the attendant tells you that the person in front just paid for you? I can’t imagine that you would do a fist pump and speed off in elation. I bet you would hand over the cash you just scrounged up and pay for the person behind you. It is kind of fun typing this out because my wife and I haven’t analyzed this simple action with such minute detail. This simple act carries real power and greatest thing about it is that you empower others to commit a random act of service in the process. Kind of like a con artist, the most beautiful con is when you can get your target to commit the con for you. I’m not trying to put a dark spin on this but that was the metaphor I most immediately thought of.
One of the coolest part of this whole thing is that you will never actually know who paid for your toll. Most people are so affected by social norms that often time come in the form of something negative. A really neat thing about this is that people feel a little pressured not to break the chain and to keep on paying for the person behind them. “Pass it on to the person behind me”, and so on and so on. This can keep going until there is a person who does not have the toll amount and cannot pay. Herein lies the person that is the ultimate benefactor of everyone’s decision leading up to that event. Now the skeptic in me says that that toll booth attendant could just pocket that money and not pass it on at all. This is something that goes beyond the action. The fact that I’ll never know what happens creates an air of anonymity that is hard to create in life. You kind of feel like a masked superhero because people know that someone helped them and they can’t even put a face or name to it.
These types of things make me feel warm inside. I relish in the possibility that I created a chain reaction for good. I often wonder if my actions will have any real world implications and create positive change on a large scale. While this does not ultimately determine whether I will do something or not, I do think about it. One of my favorite quotes is by Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. and it goes like this, “the best servant does his work unseen.” To commit a random act of service is one thing. To commit a random act of service and for nobody to know you ever did it is another. Part of this assignment is to reflect on how the experience affected you. I would argue that the reasoning for doing things anonymously or in the open has little effect on the desired outcome of the action. Speaking honestly, I want people to know that I am a good person. I don’t have to commit an act of service to get this message across but I surely won’t be promoting this idea if I run from the opportunity to commit an act of service. I spoke about responsibility and pressure in my last RAS write up. I feel as though I have the capacity to role model positive behavior. Not everyone does and that is not a bad thing. But since I feel that I do, shouldn’t I put that in the open and try to inspire others through my daily actions? I’m not looking to create a movement or anything but I am trying to make the world a better place. If I can inspire one person to do something kind or to pursue a dream of theirs, then that is a victory in itself.
