I've been wanting to be and working on being spontaneously nicer. Compassionate. Whatever.

I was struck by a Simpson's episode several weeks ago, when the ghost of Lucille Ball appears in Lisa's room, smoking a cigarette. Lucy asks Lisa if she has an ashtray. Lisa is, of course, like seven years old – why would she have an ashtray? She is also smart, articulate, politically correct, and somewhat uptight and smug in her intelligence, and so I expected a response about smoking being bad, or that her parents probably wouldn't be happy about her smoking in the house, or that she just didn't have one. Instead, Lisa takes a can filled with pencils and pens, dumps it empty, and hands it to Lucy, "Will this do?" Wow!

I do try to be nice, considerate, and respectful to strangers, but it's all a bit contrived. I think too much, so when I'm nice to strangers, I'm usually very conscious of it. It's not as spontaneous as it could be – microseconds of action without thought. Lisa Simpson had to think about how to accommodate Lucy, but the accommodation was immediate (we're interpreting here, folks). She didn't run through the negative arguments in her head before deciding to accommodate her.

I'm primarily working on it while riding my bike, because that's when I'm at my instinctual most aggressive, defensive, and self-righteous. It comes out without forethought or premeditation. And it's nothing I do, I'm not particularly rude or stupid, it's all feeling. But I know about it, and sometimes I ride away ashamed of the thoughts that ran through my head in situations that weren't even a near-miss.

And it has to be more than that. A couple days ago I almost got doored riding east in the Folsom St. bike lane. I was completely in the right. I was riding along in the bike lane when the passenger side door of an SUV that was in a car traffic lane was flung open in front of me. I swerved so hard that I had to come to a full stop (yay, fast reflexes), and later had to check to see if the alignment of my front tire was off.

When I turned around, there was a girl standing there looking scared, and meekly said, "sorry". I'm not one to tell anyone off, and especially not a child. I said in the most non-admonishing tone as possilbe, "just look out for traffic next time," and rode off. No harm as far as I was concerned.

Later as I thought about the incident, I thought that I should have taken the extra step of asking her if she was alright. That would have been proper equanimity and compassion.