Cycle of Gratitude

In life, we often have to seek help from one another to meet a variety of our needs. With seeking help, comes also gratitude to the person who helped us. The giver isn’t aware whether the help given enabled the recipient to complete the task successfully or not. This is where the concept of Cycle of Gratitude comes in.

Gratitude is a basic virtue taught to us by our parents and in our value education classes. Thankfulness is the lesson of saying “Thank you” to someone who helped us in time of need. It feels gratifying to receive the same from someone whom we have helped. Imagine if the person whom we helped finished his task and called us to say: “How successfully I’ve completed the job with your help” or simply what went right or wrong in the task he just finished with your help. Doesn’t it feel great? Of course, it does! The gratitude that emanates from the person you helped is much more intense and you now value yourself a little more.

Saying thanks, expressing how the help enabled you in moving an inch closer to your goal shows that you truly value the help beyond the initial trust you had in it. And when you value the help, you value the person too, completing the cycle of gratitude. When you complete the cycle of gratitude, you incite a feeling of accomplishment in the person who has helped you, thus magnifying also your gratefulness.

What if a help enabled you to solve just a small part of the task? Does that mean the help is too insignificant to be valued and that a mere “thank you” at the time of help suffices? The help, however small it may have been, has enabled you to complete the task without a glitch. Without that, your work would still be unfinished with minor loopholes.

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