It’s 2022. Stop “Paying It Forward.”

What if You Are Paying it to Someone With More Than Enough?

Photo by Javier Molina on Unsplash

Yep. We get it. You’re a good person. Generous. Altruistic. You enjoy the “random acts of kindness” that put a smile on the face of a stranger.

That’s cool. It’s one of the things we like about you.

Now cut it the fuck out. Seriously. And yes, I needed that expletive there because you simply weren’t listening before.

Now that we are all listening and behaving our collective selves, take a beat.

I love doing good stuff for folks. I do. In fact, I often get my feelings hurt because I kind of expect that everyone is willing to spend all of their Saturdays (yes, I mean all) at the church-to-which-I-do-not-belong handing out bags of groceries to poor neighbors. That’s my jam. I have a list of stuff like that where I just jump in headlong. Okay, whatever.

But I don’t buy coffee (or anything else) for the rando in the line behind me at the drive-up window at Starbucks (or any other drive-up window). And you shouldn’t either.

It’s not that it isn’t nice. It’s absolutely nice.

But they were going to buy their own coffee anyway. You didn’t need to do it for them. What you could do instead is to buy a hot coffee for the guy who sits in the cold outside…