The good no one can repay

Shift's over. Now the unseen work moves home, and it gets quieter still. You shovel the walk of the elderly neighbor who'll never know it was you. You let the merging car in on a road full of strangers you'll never see again. You're patient with the relative who has never once been patient with you. You give to the kid, the parent, the friend who is in no position to return any of it. No scoreboard out here at all.

Seneca pushed this to its edge. Asked whether a good person should help even the ungrateful, he answered with the sky itself: "bestow benefits upon the ungrateful as well as the grateful; for the sun rises upon the wicked as well as the good, the seas are open even to pirates" (Of Benefits IV.XXVI, Stewart). The sun doesn't audit who deserves the light. It just rises.

That's the off-the-clock version of this week's move. The people closest to you, and the strangers you'll never meet again, often can't repay you and sometimes won't even notice. Give anyway. The giving was never a transaction. It was just who you decided to be.