Are you feeling a bit numb to everything happening around us? Simply focused on how you and yours get through the days and weeks? Trying to stay healthy and be sensible? Wanting to be involved and make a difference but feeling that you are just scratching the surface and wanting to throw caution to the wind and get out there. But how? And why? The combination of gratitude and guilt feels like a constant and tangible emotion in most of us and it causes a feeling of unease and discomfort.
Step in, our take on “Pay it Forward”.
Traditionally, “Pay it Forward” is an expression used to describe the beneficiary of a good deed repaying the kindness to others instead of to the original benefactor. It is a concept that has been around since ancient times but was brought into our stream of consciousness from a novel of the same name by Catherine Ryan Hyde, the subsequent movie and the social movement created globally through The Pay It Forward Movement and Foundation. We should be ever grateful to Ryan Hyde’s fictional character 12 year old Trevor McKinney who accepted his social studies teacher’s challenge to come up with a plan to change the world. And his idea was such a simple one but so impactful: do a good deed for three people and ask them to “pay it forward” to three others in need. And so grew the concept as we know it today.
While the concept of Pay it Forward is outstanding, our view is that it is simply not enough and quite candidly a bit too narrow. For instance, it is critically important to support small businesses and individuals struggling to survive, to donate food to the hungry, to help the homeless, to share generously of time and talent in any way we can. But still not enough by any standard. It is simply not an option not to focus on being part of the solution to continue the fight for all. Yes, we do see and hear inspiring stories each day and yes we should pause and consider how far we have come. Yet, the breadth and depth of injustice and disrespect is vast and unacceptable. There is still so much that must be changed, acknowledged and achieved. Civil rights icon Congressman John Lewis passed away last week and this week we remember him, mourn him and know that we lost yet another giant voice for conscious change.
It struck us that Congressman Lewis’ life-long dedicated struggle and commitment for human rights, civil liberties and equality was and is for the benefit of all of us. He was one of those generational leaders to whom we all owe a debt that must be repaid in multiples. John Lewis, often asked, “if not us, then who? If not now, then when?”. So, our take? Let’s pay it forward: there should be no expectation of simply paying forward a kindness we received but just paying forward all the time. We all have the capacity to give. If we truly give of ourselves, however uncomfortable it can sometimes be, we can truly be a part of the solution to achieve equality, productivity and prosperity.
After all, “if not us, then who? If not now, then when?”