If you only help people when it’s on camera, you’re not helping. You’re producing.

Help that depends on being seen is not really aimed at the person being helped. They become scenery, and some part of them knows it, which is why staged kindness can feel worse to receive than none at all. The giveaway is what happens when there is no camera and the job is dull.

Find one piece of help this week that cannot be filmed interestingly: stacking chairs, walking somebody’s dog, sitting with the person nobody is sitting with. Do it and then do not mention it. The feeling afterwards is quieter, and it is the real one.