Paying It Forward

This past Wednesday was the second annual "Pay It Forward Day" as proposed by a man named David Del Mundo. The pay it forward concept is certainly not a new idea. In recent years, books and movies have been released promoting the idea of going out of the way to do something unexpectedly nice for a stranger, with the notion being that person will then do something nice for someone else, and so on and so on, until maybe even the whole world is changed. This latest proposal has gained quite a lot of momentum. He posted it on the Internet, and the last time I checked, nearly 650,000 people said they would participate.

The idea is to anonymously do things like pay for someone's lunch or coffee or even a tank of gas or to otherwise do something extra-ordinarily nice. Since then, others have issued challenges to commit such so-called "random acts of kindness" every day in the month of December, which has elicited comments that kindness should be a way of life and not something which necessarily needs to have a designated day or month. This is very true, of course. However, often there's a gap between knowing something is the right thing to do and actually doing it. So I like the idea of a month-long challenge, especially to go "above and beyond" what we would normally do.

Most everyone, with a few cranky exceptions, does a fairly decent job of holding doors open for others and not butting to the front of the line. But those are the kinds of things which should be considered minimum requirements in polite society, and don't go nearly far enough. Kindness requires deliberate action. And exceptional acts of kindness, for the vast majority of us who are busily going about our everyday lives, don't always happen automatically.

The other wonderful thing about promoting a month of creative kindness, is that there is power in numbers, which builds a spirit of agreement and unity. I can't think of a better way to celebrate the Christmas season than each of us going out of our way to help someone or giving little gifts of kindness and service each day to people we don't even know. Let's take up the challenge and see if we can make a noticeable impact on our communities. Sounds like fun, doesn't it? It might even become a permanent, daily habit.