A person’s gratitude belongs to their experience, even when the favor felt small to you.

Gratitude gets calculated by the giver, who knows how little it cost, and then quietly discounted. You gave somebody a lift, waited with them, answered at a bad hour, and it barely registered on your side. On theirs it may have landed in a week when nothing else was going right. The size of a favor is set where it arrives, not where it leaves.

When somebody thanks you warmly for something small, say you are glad rather than waving it away. Their account of what it meant is the accurate one.