Pay your way
“Pay your way” is not about covering your part of the restaurant tab (though that’s a good thing too).
It is about earning your life and the remarkable, wonderful things that you experience in life. It’s about recognizing the debts we each incur along our journey.
In the end none of us actually “deserves” much. We did not earn being born, let alone being born with a particular set of genes that may make us intelligent or allow us to stand out athletically. Others did not “deserve” to be born frail or less intelligent.
We did not earn being born in a prosperous country. Others did not “deserve” to be born in squalor and disease.
We did not earn a healthy, happy baby and others did not deserve a child plagued with congenital defects.
Certainly revel in the joy of accomplishment for the body you have built, the mind you have trained, the perfection of your child, the hard work that you do. But recognize that for any of those things to happen, other things, which you had no part in earning, had to come first.
With this recognition, make a conscious choice to try to pay your way.
Paying your way is not the same as “doing good” although paying your way is always good.
Pay your way by lifting up others, helping people to achieve as you have achieved, give ear to the wounded and voice to the silenced.
Pay your way by defending the weak and challenging the comfortable, including yourself.
Pay your way by picking up that piece of trash, removing it from the wonderful world in which you live and which you did not earn.
When good deeds are done for you, pay your way by doing good deeds to others.
Helping others is an important part of paying your way. But it is important to understand that we help others not to make them better, but to make us better.
We need to carry our weight in life and not slide into simply taking. This applies to our families, our spouses, our friends, our work and our world.
If your wife is doing all the heavy lifting in your marriage, look for burdens you can take from her shoulders and wonder why you let all this weight fall on her to begin with. If you no longer love your husband and want to be with another, then pay the price and face him honestly instead of becoming a sneak and a thief.
When the clerk at the market has made your life more pleasant with her positive attitude and helpful approach, don’t leave it at perfunctory “thank you.” She gets a thousand of those a week and they have no meaning. Write her manager a note.
When a stranger is in trouble don’t wait to see who will help; just help.
If you don’t like the idea of being lonely, spend some time with those who are. If you don’t relish the thought of being a victim, defend victims. If you don’t wish to be the subject of mean gossip, don’t participate in mean gossip.
The thing about paying your way is that it never diminishes your account. It is instead a guaranteed investment that both magically grows the value of your life and multiplies the number of good things that you experience in life.
Don’t go to the grave a deadbeat. Some debts can never be paid; what matters is making the effort.
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