“Intention is the core of all conscious life. Conscious intention colors and moves everything.”  – Hsing Yun

A few weeks ago on my morning walk, I came across a dollar bill torn in half. I pocketed the two halves and continued walking. Twenty minutes later, I found another dollar and a quarter laying spread out in plain view in the middle of the sidewalk. I picked it up and stuffed it in my pocket, thinking how lucky I was at that moment. My thoughts soon turned to “what if it was placed there intentionally and is laced with poison?”. Yeah, I’ve been watching too much bad TV news! But, I took that money home and put it in my change jar.

A few days later, in the early morning dawn, I came across another dollar and a quarter, placed in the exact same position in the exact same place on the sidewalk. I looked up and down and all around for cameras or people – thinking this had to be a social experiment of some kind. Seeing nothing, I picked up the money and folded it into my hand. After about 20 steps I decided this had to be someone’s Random Act of Kindness project, and knowing that there were a lot of people who lived nearby that needed that money a lot more than I did, I placed it carefully back on the sidewalk in the same position I’d found it – dollar stretched out with the quarter on top.

Having found this same amount of money ($1.25) in the same place on two different mornings got me thinking once again about intention. Clearly, someone had intentionally put that money on the sidewalk, more than once, for some reason – as a surprise, a joke, an experiment, or perhaps just to be kind.  My brain started churning out ideas for how I might create a similar experience for someone else. Could I hide money or positive notes or some cute piece of art in places where people would randomly find them. How could those notes or dollars or pictures change their lives?

I have no idea what the true intention was of the person who placed the dollar and a quarter on the sidewalk, but one consequence was that it got another person (me) to thinking about paying it forward and doing something positive with great intent.

I’m still formulating a plan for my own (not so) Random Act of Kindness, but I wanted to share this idea with all of you, knowing how wonderful all you readers are and believing that great ideas spread.

If this happened to you, how would you respond? What do you think I should do to keep this random act of kindness going?