Pushing Carts

So last night I was running some errands at Walmart and made an impulse decision.  I probably spent about 20 minutes in the store, crossing things off of my shopping list, and then went out to my car.  It was somewhere between 8pm and 9pm, and I had nothing else planned except getting home and going to bed early.  I got to my car, emptied my cart, and looked for the closest cart-station.

As I realized that there was about a 15-20 yard walk between me and the cart rack, I looked around and noticed all the rogue carts from people who didn't want to splurge on the endless journey to the rack.  At the same time, a few sections over, I noticed a Walmart employee cleaning up carts in the rest of the parking lot.  My initial impulse was to make sure I left my cart in the rack, then I changed direction and started walking toward the employee to give him my cart and save him the walk.  Then I diverted to a new path for a third time thinking, "you know what would really save this guy a walk is if I did a section for him."  So, as terrible as I was at trying to line up several carts at a time, I took a measly 5-10 minutes out of my night and wrangled up about 10 carts and left them on the edge of the parking lot near the entrance.

My first instinct told me to bring them over to the guy and pass them off, but then I realized that would be more for me than for him.  That would only be me "showing off" how helpful I was.  Instead I left them in a spot that he would pass eventually, but couldn't see from where he was.  This way, at the end of a long, monotonous night of getting carts together, this guy would find 10 that he didn't have to worry about.

Now sure, by posting about this instance, I take away the authenticity of trying to do a "silent good deed."  That said, I'm willing to bite the bullet here, because I'd rather get the message out; and at the same time challenge myself to do more silent deeds in the future, where only I will know about them.

I realized that we often use the concept of "paying it forward" as fuel for good deeds.  Don't get me wrong, I'm all for that, but I think that it leaves a little bit of an expectation that "someday" we'll get it paid back to us.  Again, there's nothing wrong with that, but I think it's also refreshing every once in a while not to pay it forward, but just to quietly push some carts...and pay it.