August 21
Do good quietly and do not ask for thanks; the finest piety is to be useful to people.
Poor Richard's Almanack (freely rendered)
Listening mode
Do good quietly and do not ask for thanks; the finest piety is to be useful to people.
Thanks doesn't only show you that someone noticed you. It also shows you that your help got through. So when it's missing, you lack more than recognition: you don't find out whether you helped at all.
Whoever gives quietly, then, gives in a sense blind. You have an idea of what the other person needs, and you act on it. Maybe it's right. But maybe you took care of something they would rather have done themselves, or left behind advice they had known for ages. Without an answer, your assumption goes uncontradicted, and that is exactly what makes it comfortable.
That is why being useful is harder than meaning well. You can have a good intention entirely on your own. Whether you are of use to someone is decided on their side.
You don't have to demand thanks for that reason. But you can tell it apart from the information it sometimes carries, and ask for that information. Asking whether it was the right thing sounds less generous than silence. Sometimes the answer is: not quite.
