Years ago I saw a movie called Paying it Forward, or at least I think it was the name of the movie.
The leading roles were played by Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt and Haley Joel Osmond and the story line was as follows:
When Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment) begins seventh grade in Las Vegas, Nevada, his social studies teacher Eugene Simonet (Kevin Spacey) gives the class an assignment to devise and put into action a plan that will change the world for the better. Trevor’s plan is a charitable programme based on the networking of good deeds. He calls his plan “Pay It Forward”, which means the recipient of a favour does a favour for three others rather than paying the favour back. However, it needs to be a major favour that the receiver cannot complete themselves.
Trevor does a favour for three people, asking each of them to “pay the favour forward” by doing favours for three other people, and so on, along a branching tree of good deeds. His first good deed is to let a homeless man named Jerry (Jim Caviezel) live in his garage, and Jerry pays the favour forward by doing car repairs for Trevor’s mother. Trevor’s efforts appear to fail when Jerry relapses into drug addiction, but Jerry pays his debt forward later by talking to a suicidal woman, who is about to jump off the bridge.
The story had a very sad ending when Trevor was killed by another pupil. But the message is something I try to live by every day.
Always be kind to people, you don’t know their journey. Do kind deeds and do it without any condition. Say something nice to someone else every day, you don’t know what demons they are fighting and accept someone else for who they are. You are not at liberty to judge because you don’t know what their journey is.
Enjoy the rest of the week and take care of one another.
Ciao
