Sometimes I think it is hard to look at a good idea someone else had and accept that it is OK to do that thing too.

Image from Levi Weinhagen

In music, that happens all the time.  You hear a song that you like and you decide you are going to cover it.  As an artist, it is tremendously flattering to have someone cover your music because it means what you wrote something that resonates with someone else.

I’m not talking about music, though. I’m talking about an idea.

My friend Levi Weinhagen started writing a friend a day blog series at the beginning of this year.  The goal was simply to write something nice about a person in his life every day for 100 days.  I was fortunate enough to have been one of those people.

When he started doing it, I thought it was a great idea.  An idea I wished I’d had.

I’m a cynical guy.  I try to write jokes for a living.  There are many things I do well but being sincerely nice to someone is something that I can handle for an entire sentence.  Maybe two.

To write four or five paragraphs of nice about the same person?  Now that’s a challenge.

Talking about a challenge means I’m talking about the benefit I derive from such an exercise.  The benefit to others is so much more than that.  How cool is it to log on to Facebook in the morning and see that someone wrote an entire blog entry just about you?  It makes you feel special and important.

And we all deserve to feel special and important every now and again.

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