Good Deeds Pay Forward

One of the things that I'm trying to show my son is that we have to do things that we want to see others do. Be the change you want to see, is another way to put it.

We've had a pretty mild winter where I'm living right now and although I sorely missed being able to get out in the wilderness and have fun snow shoeing with my son this winter, I didn't mind the mild weather and being able to walk around with pants and a sweatshirt for quite a bit of it, considering previous years where we got feet of snow dumped on us lol. It also made for heating bills that weren't too bad, considering how the criminal companies of the world intentionally used war as an excuse to extort money from people but I digress.

With the winter we had, we did get some snow here and there! One of the occasions that we got snow a few weeks ago it ended up being a decent amount which was nice, except it melted a few days later completely lol. To the point of the post though, we got some snow and I took my son outside to shovel out the car and get things cleared up, pushing the snow into the street for the plows to take away which they usually do without much complaint and actually like the help they get from us.

While we were out there, I noticed that my neighbor to the left didn't move their car at all and it was nearly finished snowing after going all day so what I wanted to do is help them out and try to be a good model for my son and told him that we should be nice to them and shovel it out. He was more than happy to be outside and doing something physical which is a good thing and I felt that it was a great opportunity to teach him the mindset of being a positive change in the world rather than relying on others to do that for you.

We ended up seeing the guy after we were finished and he was very happy that we shoveled him out but didn't ask us to do it. He didn't even know our names! We told him and I said that it was just the right thing to do and a good thing to show my son as an example of the nice behavior. The guy was very appreciative which I enjoyed, I like helping the older people around me as a way to show some respect for them in a day and age where respect is sadly a little hard to come by with some people.

I wasn't planning on posting anything about it on Hive because it really didn't need to be, thinking it was just a nice thing to do for someone else.

We got a little bit more snow a few days ago and it was during my work day, and my wife wasn't going to go out there and shovel it which was fine because I enjoy doing the shoveling and getting the exercise from it.

I finished up work for the day and when we went outside. planning on shoveling up our spot and anyone else around us that needed it, I saw that our car and spot was cleaned up! I was shocked but immediately knew that it was the neighbor that we did a kind gesture for a few weeks back and it felt really nice. I didn't want him to shovel the spot out, since I was looking forward to the exercise it provided me but I wasn't going to complain about having my spot shoveled out and car cleaned off a bit! I will have to see him in a couple days and thank him for helping me!

Not wanting to waste the opportunity though, we took the chance to walk around and find other spots that weren't cleaned off yet and we instead used the situation to clean up some others that we normally wouldn't have been able to so it felt good to continue to pay the gesture forward. We live in an area with a larger population of older folks so I try to do what I can to help them out, knowing that they could use the help more than others and don't expect a penny from them for it.

My son enjoyed the time out and working for others as a nice thing to do so it ended up being a win on many fronts, doing something nice for a neighbor and having them do something nice back to us felt good, and keeping that going with others is where I think it's at! I'm hoping with these small gestures, one at a time, they add up and make small improvements in a society that's increasingly being torn apart at the seams by some pretty unfortunate trends and groups hell bent on sewing discord and distrust among people.