April 10
Act out of love, not out of calculation. Whoever lifts up their neighbour lifts themselves up.
The Evening Hour of a Hermit (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Act out of love, not out of calculation. Whoever lifts up their neighbour lifts themselves up.
When you have helped someone, you usually remember it more precisely than they do. You still know how long the two of you were on the phone, which evening you put off for it and the sentence they finally hung up with. For them it was perhaps simply a difficult week in which you also appeared.
This uneven memory isn't ingratitude. Someone who is standing firmly again doesn't like to think back to the time when they had to be held up. If the help worked, it often fades especially quickly for them.
For you it remains uncomfortable. Part of you may have been keeping count after all. Not a bill, more a quiet expectation that the other person will come back to it someday. That doesn't make the help wrong. But as long as you are waiting for it, you hold them a little in the very state you wanted to help them out of.
Later they tell you about something that went well for them and don't mention that week at all. You notice that for a moment you were waiting for it. Then you go on listening.
