If your empathy needs empathy in return, it is not empathy.
Anyone can love a tender heart. The challenge is to keep your tenderness intact even towards one who has none to offer back.
Whatever you give to another, be it wealth, opportunity, support, wisdom or love, only you will know what it cost you. To them, it arrives as something they always deserved, something that was always theirs or something they earned on their own. They will understand its value only when they offer the same to others.
So do not expect gratitude. Gratitude is a tax not every soul can afford to pay. It is an inner maturity some have grown into; others have not yet been given the chance. No one can force it.
If someone cannot be grateful, it means the universe has not yet placed that lesson in their hands. They do not have it to give. Empathise. Poverty cannot do charity. To beg for it dishonors you. To force it dishonors them. Either way, it is violence.
Even when you forcefully extract it, it is temporary. Like squeezing an empty tube of toothpaste, it only exposes your desperation to take.
Compassion, gratitude and love are not returns on investment.
Give. Then forget you gave. The flower does not ask the bee for thanks; it simply blooms and that is enough.
— SCD Balaji
