The Difficult Gift I Didn't Know I Needed

Image by @franckinjapan from Unsplash

I like to think I give without expecting anything in return.

And I mean it, genuinely. When I help, it is because I can, and because it feels right. I don't keep a mental ledger. I don't wait for favours to circle back. That is just how I have always approached things.

But here is the honest part.

When someone thanks me — really thanks me — something in me quietly lights up. Not in a way I would openly admit at the time. More like a small, internal exhale. Oh good. That landed. It is not about the praise itself.
It is more like — confirmation. A quiet signal that I am on the right track.

I planned an event a couple of years, ago. Programme flow, script, dry runs, logistics, manpower. The kind of day where you are holding many threads at once and hoping none of them fray publicly. It ran. Things landed. And when it was over, I did what you do after a day like that — I went home, sat down, and let the exhaustion catch up with me.

I wasn't expecting anything more from the day.

Then my phone lit up.

A text from one of the team members. Short. Just enough to say — you did a good job today.

I froze.

Not in a dramatic way. Just — still. The kind of still where you read the message twice because you are not quite sure what to do with it.

Here is the thing about this particular person. He is not unkind, not at all. But he is someone with opinions. The kind of person who notices things, who has a view, and who does not hand out words carelessly. Working alongside him, I had quietly learned that his silence was simply his default. It did not mean disapproval. It just meant — nothing was wrong.

So when he said nothing, I took it as nothing.

But when he said something, apparently, it meant quite a lot more than I realised.

Sitting there at home, tired, I found myself unexpectedly pleased. More than pleased, if I am honest. Because somewhere along the way, without ever deciding to, I had begun to quietly measure myself against his standards. There was no test. He never set one. But I had been holding his measure all the same — and I hadn't known that until the moment he handed it back to me.

That was the gift. Not the six words in the text. The discovery underneath them.

I sat with that for a while.

Because it is a strange thing to discover about yourself — that you have been quietly seeking something you never consciously asked for. I give freely. I help because I can. I don't expect return. All of that is still true.

And yet, deep down, I wanted to know I had done well. Not from everyone. From him specifically. Someone whose silence I had learned to read, and whose words, when they came, carried a different kind of weight.

I think we all have someone like that. We don't always name them. We might not even realise they are there. But somewhere in the course of working alongside certain people, we begin to hold their measure quietly — not because they demanded it, but because we respect them enough to care what they think.

The tricky part is admitting it.

Because admitting it feels uncomfortably close to needing approval. And needing approval feels like it contradicts everything we tell ourselves about giving freely and expecting nothing.

But I don't think it does. Not really.

There is a difference between chasing validation from everyone, and quietly caring what one person thinks. The first is exhausting and never quite satisfied. The second is just — human. It is what happens when you respect someone enough to let their opinion matter.

And here is what I have come to understand: staying open to that is not a weakness. It is what keeps us from hardening completely.

In my book, I write about freshly made spaghetti. Soft, tender, not yet set. Still impressionable. I wrote it thinking about beginners, about new seasons, about the early stages of becoming. But sitting there with my phone, tired from a day I had planned down to the last detail, I realised — you can be capable and still be reachable. You can be the one holding everything together and still have a quiet, unhardened place that a few honest words can reach.

That is not something to fix. That is something to be grateful for.

Because the moment we harden completely — the moment nothing lands anymore, the moment no one's words can reach us — we stop growing. We become efficient, perhaps. Organised, certainly. But closed.

The difficult gift was not the compliment.

It was the reminder that I was still soft enough to receive one.

And that after a long day of holding everything together, one quiet text from someone I respected was enough to make me feel — seen. Not celebrated. Not applauded. Just seen.

That, I did not know I needed.

But I did. And I am glad it arrived when my defences were down, when the day was done, and when there was nothing left to do but sit with it honestly.

Some gifts arrive wrapped in grand gestures. Others arrive as a short text on a tired evening.

Both count.