The Lost Ideal of Paying It Forward

It can be the smallest spark of kindness from one furnace that can lead to an inferno for another. Something so insignificant for someone can change the outlook of another. It is something that is always said but not always acted upon. So simple in speech yet so hard to put into practice.

What stops us then?

Maybe it is a simple moment of selfishness, maybe it is ignorance of those around you, maybe it is the idea that nothing in this life is free. An ideology that has stopped many a kind-hearted individual from sharing that kindness with others for the very fear that they could be taken advantage of, never get their time back, or getting anything else in return.

But what can happen when you set those fears embedded into your brain by society's hard notions aside for a moment?

I am a creature of habit. In the morning before I go to work everyday I go out and get a coffee from Starbucks. It is a way for me to get out of the house now that I am a freelance writer and content creator who has the privilege of working from home.

Two mornings in the last month had me staring at my usual drive-thru barista in astonishment as she told me that the person in front of me paid for my drink. What are the odds that in one month I could have someone pay for my drink twice? Not only that but as part of a video idea I went thru Dutch Bros and my barista there heard that I was trying a special holiday drink for the first time and waived off the drink and said it was on them.

I was in utter shock.

How could someone who did not know me pay for me?

These random acts of kindness came on different days.

One day I was rather annoyed with the work that I was putting out and frustrated with myself for not being able notice the downward spiral of my mental health enough that it manifested itself out in my work but that I also missed out on just living. Then I went through the drive thru line at Dutch Bros and came across a kind barista with an amazing attitude and a kindness beyond compare.

He did not know that I was in the dumps. He did not know that I was struggling looking for more work. He had no idea that I was feeling inadequate. Yet, there he was with a smile and a free drink in his hand.

Yet another day I was on cloud 9. I had just rekindled a love of my job, wrote some amazing pieces that I did not think I would ever have had the ability to do in a million years, and earned a few more subscribers to my channel.

My day was made even better, when my usual barista after the usual chat back and forth of our previous day, told me that my drink was paid for. I was so moved and overwhelmed by the amount of times that I have been truly blessed by other people and made that day a vow to try and find small ways to pay those kindnesses forward rather than to wait for it to happen to me.

It was just that one act that sparked a life-changing outlook for me. I am only one person that was changed by this act. Imagine how many countless other instances sparked a chain of positivity in a steadily burdened world.