A very nice story. Taken from Nereo C. Lujan’s The Public Realm, The Daily Guardian (16 October 2009).

Pay It Forward

Journalist Florence Hibionada had goose bumps last Sunday (a day before the Bukas Kotse Gang carted away her laptop) while helping other media personalities pack donated items for victims of Typhoon Ondoy. Spotting a grey PBA shirt from among the second-hand clothes received by Oplan: Balos Bulig, a relief mission launched by the Philippine Tri-Media Multi-Purpose Cooperative (PTMC), she immediately became anxious. She knew she saw that shirt before. Inspecting it, she saw the letters C and P written in faded black marker at the shirt’s label. The handwriting is very familiar, as it belongs to Nana, her long-time helper.

CP stands for Clarence Philip, the name of her youngest son. The shirt was one of those donated by CP to victims of Typhoon Frank last year, particularly to media workers whose houses were submerged in floodwaters. Obviously, the recipient of CP’s benevolence felt it was time to repay the kindness he or she received after experiencing last year’s disaster. But repayment here does not mean actually paying the benefactor back, for CP remains unknown to his beneficiary. In other words, payment can be made forward, not backward.

As an anonymous author beautifully puts it, “Don’t repay kindness. Pass it on.” Indeed, it may just be one shirt, but it sent a remarkable message that made everyone speechless after Florence announced her magnificent find to those present that afternoon at the grounds of radio station Z100. Revealing who the original owner of the shirt was, she recalls it was almost new when her son gave it away, and it still does appear new.

“I just couldn’t imagine how, of all people and of all these many donations, it would be me who would be packing the shirt,” she told me later. “Maybe, it was just symbolic that this relief drive is aptly titled Oplan: Balos-Bulig – as it is time for Ilonggos to pass on the kindness they received when Typhoon Frank devastated our city last year. And maybe, there is a providential message behind all these.”

Passing on kindness is an idea that was made popular by a 2000 movie based on Catherine Ryan Hyde’s novel Pay It Forward. It tells of a story of an 11-year-old boy named Trevor McKinney who started a charitable pyramid scheme, where a recipient of a good deed should do three good deeds for others in the hope of creating a network of benevolence. Trevor had one rule though – such good deeds should be things that the other person cannot accomplish on their own. And what started as a school project for Trevor in his Social Studies class became a social movement with the goal of making the world a better place.

In real life, Ryan Hyde and friends subsequently established the Pay It Forward Foundation in September 2000 to educate and inspire students to realize that they can change the world, and provide them with opportunities to do so. The Foundation provides grants to one-time-only service-oriented projects identified by youth as activities they would like to perform to benefit their school, neighborhood, or greater community. Such projects must contain a “pay it forward” focus – that is, they must be based on the concept of one person doing a favor for others, who in turn do favors for others, with the results growing exponentially.

We don’t know exactly for sure how many have read Ryan Hyde’s book or have watched the movie, and we don’t even know if the recipient of CP’s shirt who became a donor himself or herself have heard of “pay it forward.” But if it was instinct that brought the shirt back to the donation stream, it was an admirable one and one that should be made transmissible. For books and movies can be forgotten, but instinct forms part of behavior and of character. Trivial as it may seem, this reveals that the charitable pyramid scheme do exists and thrives.

In his essay Compensation, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote: “In the order of nature we cannot render benefits to those from whom we receive them, or only seldom. But the benefit we receive must be rendered again, line for line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody.”

Indeed, it is really impossible for us to literally pay back every kindness that we have received. We can’t wait for a time when our benefactors would find themselves in need of help so we can repay them. That would be ridiculous. And it would be doubly ridiculous to even pray for that time to come. So, all we must do is to find someone to whom we can pay forward to.

Setting it in rhyme, this is how Henry Burton immortalizes the idea:

Have you had a kindness shown? Pass it on!
‘Twas not given for thee alone, Pass it on!
Let it travel down the years, Let it wipe another’s tears,
‘Till in Heaven the deed appears – Pass it on!

~ Nereo C. Lujan
The Public Realm
The Daily Guardian
16 October 2009