We can Pay Forward, but we can never Pay Back.....

"We make a living by what we get, we make a life by what we give."

Sir Winston Churchill

I found this picture and the idea that was attached on Facebook this week. I joined the host of people who had "shared" the idea on their Facebook page. It told of a new idea moving through the coffee shop world. You pay for your order and then tell the cashier to add a "pay it forward" coffee to your bill. This is then ready for the first person to enter the coffee shop who needs a free hot drink. I intend to drop in on my favorite coffee shop this morning and pay a coffee forward.

"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 by line, deed for deed, cent for cent, to somebody."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am in debt to a host of people who stepped forward and helped me when they obviously gained little or nothing from that incredible largess. I am a debtor to a million personal loans that were given with little expectation of repayment. This nameless shrouded mass of "mite givers" who gave of their time, talent and treasure that I might survive and thrive. The man who answered a telephone call in the early hours of a wet Monday morning in 1995 to hear a drunk explain he needed absolution; the dear lady who made lunch and Sunday tea most every week for seven years, the men who stepped up and shouldered the burdens of a destitute young man who needed help to find a way through Cold Turkey and the personal desolation of a broken mind. From my Spiritual Father who taught me how to first lead myself, and then lead others. To a Deity that forgave a life of depravity and took unto Himself the consequences of my inhumane years.

This is the man who owed too much to ever pay back.....

I am a debtor to so many people...

It has created within me a line of credit for the next person who comes along who has need of unsecured largess from me. I can never pay those generous people back, but I can pay their generosity forward. For I am a debtor who can never pay back to those who gave so unstintingly.

But I can pay it forward to a new set of people who need unsecured largess.

Who do you owe? Who do you pay that debt forward to?