Kids carve their initials into desks because everyone wants proof they were here. Kindness is a better carving tool.

The impulse behind a carved desk is completely reasonable. Everybody wants evidence that they existed in a place, and a knife into wood is the fastest version available. The weakness is the medium, because a desk gets sanded, replaced or thrown out, and the initials mean nothing to whoever reads them. A person carries a mark much longer and can tell you what it was for.

Leave one this week in somebody rather than on something. Talk to the kid nobody talks to, or say the specific thing you admire about a friend out loud, to their face. That version lasts.