December 1 - Pay It Forward Day

Posted on December 1, 2021

Key points

This is an update of my post published on December 1, 2010:

Started by David Del Mundo and publicized via Facebook, Pay It Forward Day is a day in which we can do random acts of kindness—a good deed for a total stranger, without expecting anything in return.

Here are some of David’s suggestions for this day:

Pay for someone’s cup of coffee…
Buy a meal for the next person in line…
Buy someone some groceries…
Get the next person’s gas…
Give a stranger a bouquet of flowers…
Help someone out, if you see a need, or donate something needed…

The whole idea of “pay it forward” is that good deeds aren’t necessarily repaid in kind by recipients, but that they will feel good about people in general and do a good deed to someone else. When a lot of people are doing good things for other people, the originator of the good deed will inevitably have someone, some time, do a good deed for him or her as well. It’s called “generalized reciprocity.”

This concept was a key plot element in a play in ancient Greece (around 300 BCE) and in a 2000 novel and movie.

Benjamin Franklin said that “paying it forward,” when concerning money, is a way of doing “a deal of good with a little money.” Here is what he suggested to a fellow:

I do not pretend to give such a Sum; I only lend it to you. When you […] meet with another honest Man in similar Distress, you must pay me by lending this Sum to him; enjoining him to discharge the Debt by a like operation, when he shall be able, and shall meet with another opportunity. I hope it may thus go thro’ many hands, before it meets with a Knave that will stop its Progress.

The concept has also been expressed by Ralph Waldo Emerson, famed college football coach Woody Hayes, a spokesperson for Alcoholics Anonymous, sci-fi writer Robert Heinlein, Oprah, and the Pay It Forward Foundation.

Here’s one pay-it-forward story:

Paul Erdös

Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdös visited Harvard University. There he met a promising math student who was about to be expelled because he was unable to pay his tuition. Erdös paid the young man’s tuition in full. Years later the grateful man offered to return the entire amount to Erdös, but Erdös insisted that the man find another student in a similar situation and give the tuition to him. (It occurs to me, cynic that I am, that the tuition may have gone up drastically “years later.”)

Of course, “paying it forward” doesn’t have to involve a lot of money, such as college tuition. It doesn’t have to involve ANY money—it could be effort, time, help, support. Even small favors or expenditures of just a few dollars might do a world of good holiday-spirit-wise, community-spirit-wise, happiness-wise!