I love the ‘pay it forward’ concept and really experienced it for the first time when I was living in Kelowna BC.
One evening at a women’s event, I met an inspirational speaker named Crystal Flaman. Her life experiences ranged from doing triathlons, to renovating a ramshackle old house on it’s last legs into a beautiful home for international travelers to enjoy, to becoming an inspirational public speaker. But although she had many inspiring experiences under her belt, her real charm was that she was a truly kind and giving person.
Crystal had made cards she called ‘Imagine the Ripple Effect’ cards that she carried around and gave to people when she did spontaneous acts of kindness. She gave me a small stack of cards that I now carry around in my wallet and use whenever an occasion arises.
The first time I used a Imagine the Ripple Effect card, I was driving from Kelowna to Vancouver. When I opened my wallet at the toll booth to pay, I saw a card sticking out and decided to pay for the person behind me as well. It felt great.
The second time I was standing in line at the local health food store and suddenly decided to pay for the woman behind me. At first it was a little uncomfortable for her because she didn’t know why I was paying for her. Perhaps she thought I was trying to pick her up? Maybe she thought I had mistaken her for someone I knew?
In any case, once I handed her the card and briefly explained what it was, she relaxed. I also suggested that if she felt so inclined, she could pay it forward to someone else in the community it the future.
In the small town where I live, it is more common for strangers to be nice to each other because you never know who knows you. But in big cities especially, people assume you are either weird or want something if you randomly do something nice, which is really a shame because the sense of community lessens.
In order to bring community together, there needs to be more awareness for treating the people around us like family, even if they are strangers. It’s important to have that ’small town’ attitude of caring so that our children learn what community is really all about.
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I love this Rebecca. Where do I get these cards??
Crystal has a website which is crystalflaman.com or it would be really easy to print some out yourself I think. It’s such a nice concept and feels good to use them.
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