It’s little things that save the world and make it livable; things like a strip of tape that someone went out of their way to paste on a raised piece of sidewalk. It’s a little thing, but important.

First, and obviously, it likely prevented someone from being hurt. But secondly, and perhaps more importantly, it showed every passer-by – probably hundreds of them – that someone cared. These are not trivial things: They are little images of decency and benevolence that will live in the minds of the people who saw this… and will ripple throughout time.

Eric Hoffer, famous years ago as a “longshoreman philosopher,” used to say that he judged the quality of a society by how well they maintained their infrastructure. That’s an interesting metric, and by it, whoever placed this tape passes as a force for good in the world.

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Now, before you head out into the mundane, please decide that you’ll recognize small opportunities to do good, and will grasp them. All too often our mental inertia pulls us past such opportunities, but if you’ve decided in advance to take them, you’ll probably be able to cut through your inertia.