Thank You

“Thank You” was not a thing that I got to learn to say a lot growing up in the 90’s in Indian suburbs. Schools mostly taught things for the sake of teaching. The expectation was that the students would be able to learn enough to impress the attention of colleges to accept them. College also repeated the same process, teach the students enough to become baits for the next phase of life which is work. Work is a roaring river in itself where different people get pulled in different directions, but everyone reaches a consolidation phase eventually that leads to marriage and family. That was the imprinted average way of life, whether you are rich or poor, this needed to be followed in the Indian society.

The teachers wanted students to learn to impress the person they are talking to, through smartness. The rote form of memorization to learn just teaches that. A mind accumulated with knowledge that can infer correctly got higher appreciation than the one that explored the nature of that knowledge from subjective facets. I found it easy to multi task and memorize, as a result of which I started looking for optimizing for maximum results at any given moment. And I was rewarded for being smart. Schools and parents both graded that with higher value than learning to experience a moment and gain knowledge from that.

One such thing that was taught was to say “Thank you”. Thank you is such an absurdly short sentence. Like a sentence chopped off at the beginning. The subject(I) feels hidden behind the sentence and when we say it, we just pronounce something to the object(you). I learnt “Thank You” as something to pronounce back at the other person when they have done some general good.

“Thank you” also feels short at the end, because a reason seems missing. Thank you feels like a dessert at the end of a good meal; that if missed feels like an unfulfilling meal. A good deed needs a “Thank you” note as its dessert of appreciation. An effect that should have a cause. But does thank you need a cause to be brought about. A cause-less thank you should be effort-less right?

In its terseness, “Thank You” conveys an action that is effortless and detached. If saying “Thank You” is not to impress the direction of the conversation or to impress the person involved, then there is nothing the self gains from saying those words. There is a detachment from any emotion associated toward it and thus emerges gratitude in the reality of the moment.

In my last few years, after moving to the United States, I felt “Thank You” as something for conversation completeness. It does not even satisfy the ego’s interest to impress as it is in India. “Thank You” has become a duty. A transaction where money is paid for some goods. “Thank You” being the money for the conversational goods.

Now, when I say “Thank You” there is no desire to impress or for acceptance. There is no hurry in saying it because it is not meant to finish the conversation but to allow it to linger in both the minds in a timeless manner. “Thank You” does not have an intention. It is not an after-effect.

If the butterfly effect can be described as millions of butterflies flapping their wings at a moment, a “Thank You” is one such flap of the wing. It does not lead to a direct effect, but the rain that pours might have been triggered by one such flap of the wing a few months/days/seconds back.

“Thank You.”