When I retired in 2012 and moved to Pennsylvania, I kept telling my friends this would be my time of giving back. I started volunteering at a therapeutic riding center near my home. Started learning Reiki, something I had wanted to do since my twenties. Volunteered at the local Food Pantry and a local Humane Society. I even offered my Reiki services to the senior citizen facility in town but they weren’t keen on the “new age” stuff.
Over time I cut down on my activities. Cleaning a litter box the size of a kiddie pool at the Humane Society “cat” house did a number on my asthma. The local Food Pantry had so many volunteers we kept stepping all over ourselves. I still volunteer at the therapeutic riding center on a lot of different levels. I’m doing my Reiki healing thing often for little or no compensation. If someone needs an energy blast, I will oblige. Things have died down now to a dull roar. So I guess I am actively giving back or really paying it forward. But they are totally different concepts, I think. I didn’t give it much thought until now.
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The concept of paying it forward has a foundation in history. In 1784, founding father Ben Franklin lent one Benjamin Webb some money asking in a letter that Mr. Webb not repay him directly. Instead, Franklin hoped that Webb would at some point meet an “honest man” in need of financial help and pass the money along to him. And so the concept of paying it forward crept into our historical framework. I guess what I called my “time of giving back” is really a time of “paying it forward”. I didn’t use money though. I’ve always been a sweat equity kind of person. So paying it forward for me involves doing, rather than contributing financially.
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I just arranged for a new restaurant here in Milford PA to serve crepes at a meeting with some town people at the therapeutic riding center. My husband Dave and I want them to succeed. We really don’t know them well, just started having crepes there about once a week. Maybe its selfish, because we love good food. But seeing a new business thrive was something we wanted to do. Life has been good to Dave and I. We are retired, living in a house we love, surrounded by our animals. We have a few good friends we can depend on. So why not pay it forward? You need not have been lent money and told to repay it to someone else. You don’t have to be rich. And best of all, it can be fun.
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Vera’s Rave’n – The many aspects of Shamanism
