At The Market

At the market and it’s raining an annoying and thin rain. Through the rusty, battered stalls I wander slowly, humming to myself and feeling good. Why let rain ruin my shopping trip for nothing? From the butcher’s van I hear the guy with the microphone up-selling his wares: “There’s eight, there’s ten, twelve, fourteen, there’s sixteen pounds worth for a fiver.”

“That sounds good. I’ll take it.”

“I don’t blame ya.”

There’s not actually anything on my shopping list. I’m just scraping around a stall of second hand nonsense and stumble upon the figure of a white ghost. It’s plastic and it’s total trash. I turn on the switch and watch as it morphs from one colour shade to another. Yep, it’s another piece of useless junk that I want. I lean over to ask the stall holder how much it’s gonna cost.

“Don’t worry about it. You can have it. Things like that I just...I give them away.”

I’m going to get it for free, but can’t accept that straight off. “How does that work for business then?” I ask him, wanting to know how he pays rent on the stall if he doesn’t accept money as payment.

He laughs. “Well, consider it my good deed for the day.” I’ve not seen that guy and his stall of general tat since, so I guess he did one too many good deeds, and gave away one too many items for free. Generally, the market is made up of the same twenty stalls, all of which I recognise as regulars. There is something to say for the generosity of complete strangers; when small acts of kindness are performed simply because they can be.

The idea of doing a good deed everyday stuck with me, and I actively tried to do the same for weeks afterwards. I’d pushed wheelchair users along, handed out liberated food at a festival, bought rounds, shared dope, given out guitar strings, returned a lost passport and caught a lady when she fell backwards down the stairs at the train station – and that was all in the first week of consciously trying to do good deeds. To do these things – totally selflessly – had actually left me with a sense of pride and made life seem so much more worthwhile, considering the tininess of some of the acts I’d performed.

So, don’t seek to do good deeds, but let them come to you, and follow them through. It’ll be good for you; for the soul and the mind and your place on this planet living this life.