“One morning in December of 2012, at the drive-through window of a Tim Hortons coffee shop in Winnipeg, Manitoba, a customer paid for her order and then picked up the tab for the stranger in the car behind her in line. Then that customer paid the bill for the following customer in line — and so on, for the next 226 customers, in a three-hour sequence of spontaneous generosity.
It turns out that such “pay it forward” chains are not unheard-of at Tim Hortons (though they are usually much shorter), and news outlets have reported the emergence of many such chains in a variety of restaurant drive-throughs and tollbooths throughout North America. Last year, a Chick-fil-A in Houston experienced a 67-car chain. A few months later, a Heav’nly Donuts in Amesbury, Mass., had a run of 55 cars.
Why do these things happen? … We conclude that observing an act of kindness is likely to play an important role in setting a cascade of generosity in motion, since many people can potentially observe a single act of helping. But we found that it was receiving help that sustained the cascade as it spread through the group.”
Milena Zvetkova in The Science of “Paying it Forward” in The New York Times on 14 March 2014. To read the research, visit the University of Notre Dame Science of Generosity archive.
If one act of kindness can set a cascade of generosity in motion, what is something you can do today? Perhaps this act will be for someone you don’t even know or who could never pay you back, but who likely might pay it forward out of what they have. Who knows? You might find it so rewarding that it might turn into a daily routine.