In the Spirit of the Season

I decided to change probabilities for the holidays this year. In lieu of giving presents, I chose to use my gift money to make charitable donations. I realize that I may not be doing my part as a good little consumer to help the economy, but given how many people are struggling and how many worthy causes are hurting for support, I felt the resources I could spare would be put to better use by assisting those who are truly in need.

In late October, I sent an email to those with whom I usually exchange gifts explaining my plans for this year, and I encouraged them to follow suit. Nearly everyone wrote back and concurred with the idea. In fact, a number of them said they would contact others with whom they usually exchange gifts and suggest that they do the same. Before long, I was delighted to see this effort take on a life of its own.

I’d like to think this illustrates how small gestures can yield big results. It also shows, as I wrote in Chapter 8 of Get the Picture, how we’re all truly connected. The beliefs and intents we hold fan out in all directions, like ripples in a global pond, touching many others who are seemingly far removed from, yet nevertheless integrally linked to, each of us.

The results of this undertaking particularly remind me of the message in the film “Pay It Forward,” one of the pictures profiled in the aforementioned chapter. Its story has a number of parallels to my probability shift (only told a bit more eloquently).

Eugene Simonet (Kevin Spacey), a junior high school social studies teacher, gives his class a special assignment – to come up with innovative suggestions on how to change the world. One of his students, Trevor McKinney (Haley Joel Osment), a bright, sensitive, impressionable young man, is particularly captivated by the task. He takes the assignment to heart and creates a plan that’s a real original: He proposes that each person help three others with something they can’t accomplish on their own. Anyone who successfully receives the necessary assistance must then help three more people in need of aid, who must in turn do the same, and so on in an endless chain of permutations that eventually encompasses virtually everyone on the planet. Trevor calls his plan “pay it forward,” an altruistic concept of doing for others that purposely runs counter to socially ingrained expectations based on the more familiar notion of “pay it back.”

Word of the pay it forward movement finds its way into the outside world, eventually wending its way to Chris Chandler (Jay Mohr), an intrepid reporter who decides it would make a good story. He’s genuinely puzzled by this phenomenon of supreme selflessness, especially when he becomes a direct beneficiary of it. Chris thus begins researching the story to trace it back to its source, bringing the work of an enterprising seventh grader to the wider world, with even greater impact than imagined.

“Pay It Forward” has a great message for this time of year. Because of that, I’d like to suggest this picture as a new classic for the holidays. If you haven’t seen it, be sure to watch it with those you care about, especially the youngsters in your life. What a great gift this film is, one whose sentiment is truly in the spirit of the season.

(“Pay It Forward” – 2000; Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, Haley Joel Osment, Jay Mohr, James Caviezel, Jon Bon Jovi, Angie Dickinson, David Ramsey, Gary Werntz, Kathleen Wilhoite, Colleen Flynn; Mimi Leder, director; Leslie Dixon, screenplay; Catherine Ryan Hyde, book)