Pay It Forward

My honest answer is “yes” and, the bit that I would change is the tense. I don’t think that we are giving away what we don’t currently have. I don’t think this would actually work. I do think that we might be trying to give to others that which we didn’t have in the past…

Why would we do this? I think it is because we are naturally generous as humans, and when we have benefited from suddenly fulfilling some kind of lack we experienced in the past, then we REALLY know the benefit of having that In the present.

Thus, when we understand the value of such a thing, we generously wish to gift it to others around us…

I do see it over and over in my work.

A landscape gardener who is driven to do his work for others because there was a whole heap of family tension around DIY when he was small. As an adult, he simply wants to prove that he can make a garden shed stand up. He wants this both for himself and to save others from that stress he experienced in his past.

There is an interpreter in the deaf community whose strong desire to foster communications arises from a childhood of undiagnosed dyslexia when communication was her vulnerability. Now communication is her strength. This woman really knows the value of communication and generously wishes to share that with those who need it.

And, here is a career coach who could turn her hand to just about anything and thus couldn’t identify exactly what her thing was … and now her thing is helping others to identify their thing, over and over… this coach REALLY knows the value of knowing what your thing is …

So it seems it is not quite accurate that we try to give away the thing that we seek. I actually think we are trying to pay it forward on the thing that we found. And, we do so because we know just how very important that thing is!