True kindness is not transactional. It is not “I scratch your back, so that you scratch mine.”

True giving is based on the belief that when we do good to others, it creates a ripple effect. One good deed begets another good deed. It multiplies outwards. When enough kind deeds are done, our world becomes a better place.

I love the biblical principle that we should give to those who cannot repay us (Luke 14:12). Our good deeds will be repaid, someday, somehow.

As Pay Kindness Forward celebrates its anniversary, I’d like to thank Dr Vivian Passion Koh for pioneering such a meaningful and bold movement.

Being kind can be a terribly lonely and uncertain journey. Often you wonder if you’re being taken for a ride when you help – think about the last time you loan a friend a big sum of money because he or she was in trouble, or when you stood up for a colleague who was bullied at workplace.

You get burnt, or ridiculed, or lied to, more often than not. That is why we must encouragement one another to carry on the journey of being kind. We must find one another, who believes in paying kindness forward.

May the kindness that you pay forward inspire many more acts of kindness. The world becomes a better place when kindness abounds.

It can start with you.