Repay the Debt

One of the ways that I find peace is to pay debts. Not the credit card kind. I don’t think anyone really enjoys paying those back. There is some time in your life you’ve had to feel a debt owed you had to pay back. The tug that you need to pay someone or something back because of what you received as a benefit.

Currency paid for those debts isn’t always in dollars or paper as we work to pay them back. Sometimes and most often times the best debts that are paid back to others are the ones in which we trade skills with one another. Someone one teaches you a trade. In return, you teach them a trade they didn’t already have. Debt paid.

If we take the time to reflect, to intentionally pause, and look backwards there’s is almost always someone or something to be grateful for. Sometimes it can be a person. Sometimes it can be in a thing that happened to us. Those are debts that can be paid back too. Just the very act of having someone in our life that brings out our best self should encourage us to do the same for others.

Random acts of kindness are great examples of this that happen in real time around us all the time. When someone decides to pay it forward for no other reason than to remain a mystery while the benefactor of their kindness gets all the reward happens daily. Go to your most popular watering hole and you may find yourself the benefactor of that very thing.

Something doesn’t have to happen to you to trigger this feeling or need to pay a debt. Your parents hopefully taught you how to properly care for and curate peer relationships. I feel a sense of moral responsibility everyday to find ways to do better for others and encourage them to do the same. In a sense a debt to humanity that will not grow old to me in paying, nor will it ever be completely paid in full. My father taught me compassion and empathy for my fellow peers, friends, co-workers, and family. That’s a debt I am okay with never fully being able to pay back. Helping others as I was once was helped become the best version of myself is where I find peace.

So here’s where I leave this thought about paying debts to humanity and those around you everyday. Some debts you will find finality in and they will end. Other debts, well, they won’t ever be fully paid back. You will take them with you when you leave this planet. Those are sometimes the best kind. Those debts can be the fuel that fills us to keep going. They can be incredible legacies that others shoulder because they inspire. Inspiring others to push beyond their means.

Here’s your thought for this week:

Has there been sometime you’ve perhaps felt you could never pay a debt back completely? When was it? Why can’t it be paid back in full? Do you want it to ever reach an end where it’s been fully paid?

Love for you to share what that could be, maybe start some dialogue on IBtP about it below, and consider a debt closer to being paid with me because you had the courage to share.

✌🏻 Shawn