Our kids have been trying a variety of sports recently and albeit doing a few things actively, basketball is one we play for fun at our local playground. When we first arrived, we didn’t even know we had a playground nearby with a basketball court. In the meantime we have discovered 5 playgrounds within a few minutes walking distance to where we live. However, this particular one had hoops, but no net. My kids asked why that is and who is responsible for it.

I explained to them that I would assume those nets were not out of metal (to all those in governmental position: all public hoops should be chains), and unfortunately some people who like or try dunking grab on and over time with weather and what not the nets must have broken off. They asked what we can do about it, and I said well, we have two options – call the phone number on the playground sign and see what happens or we take a positive initiative for the community and do a random act of kindness. My assumption being, and explaining to them, that the hoops seem like they have been empty for quite some time.

So they proposed we take initiative and do something nice for everyone that plays here.

When we got home we sat down and unfortunately used Amazon to order a pack of hoops. Three days later they arrived.

We then took a ladder and some zip-ties (cable ties) and a few other things and marched off to the playground. And while the kids played around and helped a bit, I got to work to hang up the new nets on both ends of the court.

While there were a few hooks to wrap the net into, a few were broken, so I used Gorilla tape to fasten those, and then the cable ties to hold everything in place nicely, just in case someone wanted to hang again.

The point of this post is not to share our good deed, albeit here it is, it’s about initiative and action. And this does not mean that you need to take initiative and action in everything. Its a matter of weighing the benefits versus the actual process or affects it might have on that specific environment. I believe that if we did more random acts of kindness within our communities, we would get back to our roots of thinking more about the well-being of oneself within a community versus just myself as an individual and whether I am doing well or not (greed). That being said, again, weigh out whether your good deed would actually benefit others, talk with someone if needed, and sometimes just do random acts of kindness. Make the world a better place.

We just wanted to share this, albeit it being months ago, to encourage you to think about what you can do in your community to help everyone. And again, it takes someone to get something moving. When others see someone take an initiative in something positive for all, then others will begin doing the same – in simple terms.

Make it happen.