A Little Goes a Long Way

As I was clearing the mailbox, I flipped through the stack of letters and spotted one that was addressed to me. What caught my surprise was that the envelope had the Sin Chew Jit Poh stamp on it and I was already assuming it was another one of those mails that you would thrash immediately upon opening.

Nonetheless, I was in for a pleasant surprise this time around. Though the letter was written in Chinese, my lack of ability to read a single word was more than compensated by a picture of a small boy that came with the letter.

Flashback to a couple of months back, my parents asked if I was keen to “sponsor” an orphan’s education in China. This was an annual charity program organized by Sin Chew Jit Poh whereby Malaysians can support a full year’s education for an under-privileged kid in China by donating RM 400. Whilst RM 400 is no small change, the amount was not exorbitant either and the thought that it would provide a kid with decent education made it easy to say yes. I figured that if Bill Gates was willing to part with millions, I could at least give up a few rounds of drinks. Since then, I had forgotten about the incident until when I received the letter.

Apparently, the beneficiary is a 12 year old orphan whose only other sibling was a cancer victim. They’re both under the care of their 77 year old grandfather who’s probably struggling to make ends meet himself. Some other updates in the letter which was translated by my dad included the kid’s hobby and a simple note of thank from the kid for giving him the opportunity to pursue his studies. While I’m no “emo” freak, this did hit a soft spot and it was one of those “priceless” moments that could never be substituted by any Master Cards. In fact, it wiped out all the “shit” that I’ve had to deal with for the day and left me with a pleasant smile.

Drawing to this incident, glimpses of several instances whereby small deeds of kindness went a long way and meant a lot to the recipient started popping up in my mind. Well, I’ve been on both the giving end as well as the receiving end and I could very well recall how glad I was when a stranger in The Curve offered me RM 1 when I couldn’t find any small notes to pay for my parking. I can also clearly recall how touched I was when people were holding the lift for me as well as keeping doors opened when I was in crutches not too long ago. Till now, I can still recall the gratitude shown in the face of a blind man that I helped walk across the street and I still haven't found any words suitable enough to illustrate his gratitude. This simply shows that a simple act of kindness never fails to augur well and could light up the day of the recipient. In fact, it would leave a smile on the face of the recipient who would probably then do something similar to light up the day of others.

All these reminds me of the “Pay It Forward” movement whereby individuals are encouraged to do favors for another person without any expectation of being paid back. Inspired by a novel written in 2000 that was subsequently released as a Warner Bros movie, all that is expected from the recipient of the favor is to do the same for someone else – ideally three other people. More details and success stories are available on www.payitforwardfoundation.org or www.payitforwardmovement.org.

Without wanting to sound soppy or emotional, this serves as a simple reminder that we ought to be doing some simple yet nice deeds on a daily basis. I’ll be constantly reminding myself of this and am already of thinking what I can do to play my part. To start off with, I’ve already decided to “sponsor” 2 kids this year! Afterall, a little does go a long way.