{"id":590,"date":"2006-08-07T22:03:37","date_gmt":"2006-08-08T03:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/?p=590"},"modified":"2007-12-03T13:03:03","modified_gmt":"2007-12-03T21:03:03","slug":"on-being-good","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2006\/08\/07\/on-being-good\/","title":{"rendered":"On being good"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Redtail is a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hiker who was forced off the trail by knee issues. In the ample spare time he&#8217;s had since returning home, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tomorrowlands.org\/pct\/rules_ann.html\">he&#8217;s amassed a list of thru-hiking rules<\/a>. No. 5 is my fave:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong>5. Cultivate kindness in the world; sometimes strangers are all that stand between you and nightmare. <\/strong> [Day 34]<br \/>\nOn my way back to the trail from my planned stopover at BayCon, I was riding a red-eye Greyhound bus. I went inside one of those little service stations they stop at in order to buy a hot dog and some bottled water &#8230; and the bus pulled away without me. At 2 AM, in the middle of nowhere. With my backpack and stuff all still on my seat. Fortunately, I had just about enough time to freak right the fuck out before the driver pulled a 180 and came back to pick me up. Why? Because the passenger sitting next to me noticed my absence and went up to the driver to let him know. A stranger going above the call of duty for a small act of kindness saved me from a few days of terror and heartache, and quite probably from thousands of dollars of stolen gear.<\/p>\n<p>You might be stuck in that position someday, too. So ask yourself: Am I contributing to the world in such a way as to make that act of kindness more likely? Or am I doing the opposite?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I&#8217;m just selfish enough to think that my acts of common decency will be reciprocated, and just paranoid enough to think my acts of neglect will be punished.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Redtail is a Pacific Crest Trail thru-hiker who was forced off the trail by knee issues. In the ample spare time he&#8217;s had since returning home, he&#8217;s amassed a list of thru-hiking rules. No. 5 is my fave: 5. Cultivate&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/2006\/08\/07\/on-being-good\/\">Read the whole thing<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[153,107],"tags":[150,512],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=590"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/590\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tommangan.net\/twoheeldrive\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}