Remember: It’s not about them; it’s about you.
Imagine you go on vacation, and someone breaks into your house.
Upon your return, you realize that someone has been living in your house, not because they stole anything, but because your laundry basket is empty.
Someone cleaned, ironed, and tidied your clothes. Someone fixed that wall clock that hasn’t worked for so long. There’s no dust. Someone left your house spotless.
That is one of the premises of the film 3-Iron by cult director Kim Ki-duk.
A movie where a young biker sticks advertisements on the doors of houses in the morning and at night returns to see which doors still have the advertisements stuck on them — an indication that the owner is absent — to use his lock picks to enter those houses for the night, and in return improve the state of things inside.
This movie is the perfect metaphor for when we feel that we do everything for others and yet we feel invisible.
Why keep doing it?
It’s not about them; it’s about you.
I know it sounds cliché, but your life experience is yours.
And if others don’t value your support, it’s not your problem. It’s theirs.
Just think that the ungrateful person will still have to live in their uncomfortable skin when you’re gone.
However, you will still be living in the skin of a good person.
In the skin of someone with a clear conscience who gives meaning to his life by serving others.
You are a seeker who seeks his reflection among people.
We are all born with the restlessness of feeling incomplete. And we go looking for what we lack in others.
But others can only reflect what we already have.
That’s why sometimes we see reflections of goodness in bad people.
Those good things, which a priori bad people have, are like glimpses, right?
Well, let me tell you something: they are reflections of what you like about yourself—parts of your soul.
And for that reason, you are not wasting your time when you do things for others and they don’t thank you.
Because deep down, you do it to find yourself again, to reflect bits of your soul in other people, until you can assemble all the puzzle parts and see yourself reflected utterly.
You are the sum of your actions.
You are not what you say; you are what you do because, as they say, an act is worth a thousand words.
And your impact on others is imprinted as a photograph in the psyche of the people with whom you relate.
And what you leave sown in other people’s minds remains and becomes a trail of your essence.
When you do something good for someone unselfishly, that person may not thank you for it, but over time, what you did will blossom within them, and they will do something nice for someone else.
And maybe that person in question doesn’t know why they are doing something good if their dominant tendency is selfish. But he does it.
And he does it because good deeds always have a positive return.
So keep being yourself and helping to make this a better world. Because in the universe, nothing goes to waste, least of all your good deeds.
A virtual hug
AG
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