Over 300 billion known breaths were taken and there were an estimated several trillion heartbeats. Be on the look out and report all acts of wonder to everybody.

While I'd like to think that I'd never intentionally hurt anyone, I know I have done so, more than I'll ever know. I believe that if each of us follow Martin Richard's plea -- "no more hurting people" -- at a whole new level, the world will be a safer place.

Let your actions be that ray of sunshine in someone's day. When you have a passion for life and you are feeling good, it is so easy to be generous with that emotion. Love, in all its forms, is meant to be shared.

The elderly woman was about to leave with her bagged items, and the conveyor belt was moving. I quickly reached into my wallet, took out a 10-spot, and touched the elderly woman on her arm. "Excuse me, ma'am, I think you dropped this."

We are angels on earth who touch and are touched. In a time of darkness, we can be the vehicle for light. Intuitively, every one of us wants to leave the world a better and brighter place. Those that died last week live in us and through us.

Sudden, deep feelings are often teachers that we resist or turn away from, because of their intensity. Instead, we are often asked to enter these deep feelings, the way we might enter a field after a long walk through the woods.

How are we to understand a story like this? Does it tell us that acts of kindness and the gratitude they engender outlast decades and oceans and continents? Does it tell us that kindness, like the song of a red bird, will be answered long after the bird has died?

In the wake of Sandy, I've been reflecting on the relatively upbeat and supportive mood around here and what it can teach us: Specifically, these questions: How come we can't pull together like this all the time?

Wouldn't it be wonderful if instead of shocking us, kindness was just plain regular, something we all shared and spread around freely, and that we all took time to celebrate along the way?