Pay It Forward

Hello my BuddyBoo blog followers. Thanks for reading. I am constantly trying to come up with fun topics to post in my blog and just seconds ago while reading an online article, it came to me. It has nothing to do with stationery or invitations or parties. It has to do with others.

Pay it forward. What does that term mean, anyway? Someone asked me that once. I haven't seen the movie that shares the title, but I know what it means to me - it means taking what information and knowledge and love and time I have from within me and giving it to someone else who might need it. For no reason other than to make that next person's life a little brighter. Seems simple, doesn't it?

The article I just read was about a man younger than my parents who has been on a waiting list to receive a liver transplant. He got a call last Saturday morning that a liver was ready for him some 80 or 100 miles away if he could get there through a massive snow storm. He made it to the hospital and got his transplant because 8 different snow plows literally plowed his route through a storm. It sounds like many people were involved in getting this man to his new liver. New life! New hope he's been sitting on for a year.

Hearing about a benevolent act brightens my day. It gives me hope that this world is a good place and I live among great people. It gives me inspiration to do likewise.

Here are some different ways you can be a pay-it-forward person and change the life of another person while at the same time changing yourself:

-go work a food shelf for a half day
-volunteer at a fundraising event
-hold the door open for a person walking in the store behind you
-greet cashiers with eye contact, a smile, and use their name if they have a nametag on
-spend $1.66 on a small coffee for the guy in line behind you at the coffee shop (can you imagine?)

-call your local community elementary school and ask if you can be a guest reader for kindergarteners some day
-pick up that trash you see on your walk
-spend $3.00 on some daffodils and bring them to your neighbor

...just to name a few.

I guarantee your life will change by paying it forward.

As always, share the site, pass the blog.

Jean
BuddyBoo Stationery


Oh - P.S. BuddyBoo donates a portion of its profits to autism charities. That's how I pay it forward. And let me tell you, it feels good.