Sustained kind acts are the best type

This week has been set aside as Random Acts of Kindness Week. For seven days, people are being asked to do good deeds for strangers — pick up a dinner check for the guy at the next table, perhaps. Or just offer a smile.The week is an outgrowth of the Kindness Movement that took root in America about 15 years ago. The idea is to perform good deeds on the fly.And for a newspaper columnist, the week offers dozens of angles to play.A columnist could write about doing good deeds year-round, not just for one week, for instance. Or he could fashion a column of examples of good deeds or even write a "thumb sucker" column about the notion of kindness itself.But I'm going a different route.I'm going to apply the little model of behavior that Elder Dallin H. Oaks used as a format for a Mormon conference talk not long ago.My version goes like this:Random acts of kindness for strangers are good.Random acts of kindness for friends and family are better.Sustained acts of kindness for friends and family are best.Here's a story.Years ago, my mother began taking a rather grumpy widow out to lunch every Saturday. One Saturday, on a whim, the two of them decided to visit the grave of the woman's husband. That quickly became part of the Saturday routine. Later, my mother took the woman by the grocery store to pick up a few things. Again, that became expected. Eventually, so did a trip to the post office, a trip to the dry cleaners and a stop to have an ice cream sundae.Before long, my mother's Saturdays were being spent pleasing her "friend."I used to get after her about it."Letting yourself be bullied around isn't Christian charity," I'd tell her. "It's just living with abuse. It's being a victim."Mother would smile and nod, then head out the door to shuttle her friend around for the day."Maybe if I help her," mother said, "somebody will help me when I'm her age."My mother had an unshakable faith in cosmic justice.Sadly, she passed away before anyone needed to think about driving her around for a day. But her sustained attention to that little widow has resonated through the years in our family. Today, when I do something "random" for someone and they start to turn into a long-term "project," I try to find mother's attitude and soldier on. I'm not as good at it as she was. But if she hadn't hung in their with her widow friend, I probably would have bolted on some folks who needed more from me than a random smile.And my mother's consistency has taught me a valuable lesson about service.To borrow from Elder Oaks again:Short-term commitment to someone is good.Long-term commitment is better.But open-ended commitment is best of all.