February 28, 2008

• Pay It Forward…

  Did you ever watch the movie Pay It Forward with the once-cute-lil-kid Haley Joel Osment, Helen Hunt and Kevin Spacey? I don’t remember too much from the movie but I really like the concept of paying it forward and remember how each character in the movie touched another character and asked them to pay it forward. Since I’ve moved up to the NYC area I’ve really been trying to put this into practice.

  The hubs and I have been the recipients of many acts of kindness in the past year and a half. My hubs was offered a job rather suddenly and had to start immediately. So he had to come up first while I stayed behind to pack up the apt and finish some projects at the company I was with in FL.  While we were super excited to move up here, without much knowledge of the area and due to the lack of funds it would have been pretty hard to find a decent place to live in such a short amount of time.

  I was super worried about this but then a good friend of mine from college heard about our predicament and offered to let the hubs stay with him for a month so I could finish my job in FL and the hubs could save some money and search for a decent apt. My friend was super generous to let the hubs crash with him, especially considering he really didn’t know my husband that well.

  After we left his apt (I ended up living there for a week as well), I thought about how I could pay my friend back for his kindness and boy was it hard to think of a suitable enough gesture.  Sure we’ve invited him over to our place for dinner and gave him gifts on Christmas and birthdays but how can you put a monetary value on his generosity? He’d never let us pay him half a month’s rent or the utilities. In fact he never expected anything from us.

  So instead of trying to do all these things to try and pay our friend back, we’ve been trying to pay it forward.

  Since we’ve settled into our apt and got our bearings (i.e. job and furniture) we have opened our place up to all our friends that needed a place to crash while they job hunted, grad school hunted or for vacay. I think at last count we’ve had 27 guests (many of them repeated visitors so who knows maybe we’ve had around 40ppl) stay about 179 nights in the past 18 months in our apt. Many have tried to pay us back with money and food but we just ask they pay it forward. One day they’ll be settled somewhere and someone is going to need their help.

  Not only with the housing situation but in other areas of our life people have really reached out and helped when they didn’t have to. For instance, getting this job at Xanga wouldn’t have been possible if one of my coworkers didn’t tell me about it when I was job hunting. Her thoughtfulness and concern toward me, someone she barely knew at the time, was something you rarely see.  I love my job and am totally thankful to her for helping me out. So in return I’m trying to help out other folks that are looking for jobs by proofreading resumes or asking the network of people I’ve met here if they have available positions at their companies.

  I could go on and on about the acts of kindness I’ve received and how the people that have given of themselves wanted nothing in return,  but what I guess I’m trying to say is that paying it forward is the way to go. If everyone practiced this concept who knows what would happen.

  • 3:04 pm
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