You forgot the kind thing you did in seventh grade. The person you did it for didn’t.

Kindness gets remembered unevenly. What felt like nothing to you, sitting next to somebody at lunch or telling a kid their drawing was good, got filed by them as evidence that they were not invisible, and it has been in there ever since. You will never know which of your small acts landed that way. That is the actual argument for making a lot of them.

This week, do the small obvious thing you usually talk yourself out of because it seems too minor. Say the compliment, invite the extra person, answer the awkward message. You are not trying to be impressive, and the ones that stick rarely were.