Most excellent.  I too live a "lower than average" electron life.  My work still keeps me in front of a computer (instead of in front of people!) much longer than I prefer.  Other than that...NPR a couple of times a weeks gives me all the bad news I chose to digest!  Thank you for such a concise and thoughtful post.

Bill, I think you are referring to these cards: http://www.helpothers.org/c..., where someone does an anonymous act of kindness, and leaves this physical card behind. The card then encourages that person to pay it forward, and creating a chain by passing the card along. Like you suggested, it all depends on intent. The way I look at it, by using the card, you are also sparking additional inspiration to join in an invisible circle of giving and receiving . Fact of the matter is that the chain is already there, but we aren't always tuned into it. So more than anything, the card becomes a tool for awareness. Internally, it becomes a tuning fork for possible ways to manifest generosity, and externally, it sensitizes us to each other, to our neighbors, to strangers on the streets. Here's a more in-depth exploration (by Birju Pandya in the Huffington Post) of this shift in perspective: http://www.huffingtonpost.c...