When you hear “payback,” what comes to mind? Payback is a word with a range of connotations. If we’ve borrowed money, then we undertake a payback to our lender. That’s a perfectly reasonable use for the word. But the online dictionaries we’ve consulted offer definitions for the word that are probably more well-known and less wholesome. These days, in common usage, “payback” tends to mean an act of revenge, retribution or retaliation.
Using the word in that sense reminds us of the ancient legal sanction allowing the taking of an eye for an eye. The code of law of Hammurabi, dating from the 18th century BCE in Mesopotamia, clearly delineates crimes and their appropriate mirror punishments: an eye for an eye, a broken bone for a broken bone, and so on.
While the eye-for-an-eye principle found its way into the Bible, so did nuances in its application. Harsh reciprocal judgment was softened under various circumstances and was often replaced by a monetary fine. A further refinement on reciprocal justice emerged which focused not only on payback of wrongdoing, but also on payback of kindness. We are encouraged to give freely, for we have freely received.
Someone with an extraordinary capacity for positive payback came to our attention recently. Major Fred Hargesheimer was a pilot in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II. On June 5, 1943, while flying a photo reconnaissance mission, Hargesheimer’s plane was shot down by a Japanese fighter pilot near the island of Papua New Guinea. Hargesheimer successfully parachuted to safety, spent weeks surviving in the jungle, and was eventually found by native islanders called the Nakanai who sheltered him and hid him from the Japanese for months. Then Hargesheimer was rescued by the Australians and sent home to the U.S., and he went on with his own life. But he never forgot the kindness of the Nakanai people in his time of need.
For the remainder of his life, Hargesheimer worked to pay back the Nakanai. Initially he raised funds to build a school, the first school the Nakanai people had ever attended. With additional fund raising, Hargesheimer was able to help build more schools, a clinic, a library, and offer other essentials. He and his family even moved to the island in 1970 and spent four years teaching in the local schools.
According to a New York Times article published at the time of his death in 2010, Hargesheimer had told those who asked about his long-lasting commitment to the Nakanai people that the more he thought about it, “the more I realized what a debt I had to try to repay.”
Hargesheimer did repay the people of the Nakanai tribe with actions as life-giving as the ones that saved him decades earlier. His life became focused on reciprocity, but not of evil, only of goodness.
What a different world we might inhabit if we undertook positive payback with as much energy and enthusiasm as Major Hargesheimer. Whether the kindnesses to us across the years have been literally life-saving, or simply life-inspiring, life-enhancing or life-enriching, what could we do to offer our due? How can we ensure payback?