Sandi Mann - Paying it Forward: How One Cup of Coffee Could Change the World

When Michelle Hickinbottoms 16-year-old daughter left her iPhone on a train in Birmingham in March 2015, both mum and daughter believed that was the last they would ever see of the 250 device. But they struck lucky the phone was found by 12-year-old schoolboy Josh Brown, who handed it in to the station master. So grateful were the Hickinbottoms that they asked Josh to leave his address with the station master, too, so they could send him a 20 reward. But when Mrs Hickinbottom went to collect the phone, instead of his address she found this message: Dont worry about the money, just do something nice for someone else.

Josh Brown, at the tender age of 12, with his heart-warming entreaty not to pay him back for his good deed but to pay it forward instead, really captured the essence of what paying it forward is all about.

The idea of paying it forward builds on the acts of kindness or good deeds that we, as a civilised society, are encouraged to perform for others. Traditionally, however, we are more accustomed to paying back than paying forward; paying back is when we do something nice for someone in return for them having already done something for us. So because my friend picks up my kids from school on Monday when Im working late, I pay her back by collecting her kids for her on Thursday when she cant get there in time. We are all very familiar with paying it back, and indeed society runs very well on this established system of reciprocity. You scratch my back and Ill scratch yours; weve all done it, and many of us rely on this reciprocal favour-giving to cope with the various demands on our time and resources.

Paying it forward (PIF) is different. Instead of paying back, the idea here is that we pay forward so that we dont return the favour to the person who donated it, but pay it forward to an entirely different person. So, in theory, instead of picking up my friends kids as a thank-you for helping me out with mine (paying it back), I would instead pay it forward by doing the return favour for someone else. That person, too, is encouraged to pay it forward by doing something nice for another person, and thus acts of kindness are spread around. Kindness begets kindness, and so a kindness domino effect is begun.

The essence of the pay-it-forward concept (referred to by some as upstream reciprocity) then is that we perform acts of kindness for complete strangers rather than for people we know. This way, the recipients of our good deeds cant pay us back. They can only satisfy the psychological demand for reciprocity (more on this later ) that our good deed creates by paying it forward to someone else. Of course, they are under no obligation to pay it forward to a complete stranger in the true spirit of the PIF ideology (they could choose to pay it forward to a friend instead, or, of course, not pay it forward at all), but it is hoped that the many and growing organisations that now exist around the world to promote the concept of paying it forward (see Chapter 8) will be able to spread the message so that recipients of random acts of kindness know exactly what they are meant to do! This is also the aim of this book: to spread the word and the ideology of PIF so that random acts of kindness and good deeds spread like a virulent (but benign) virus across the globe.