The message that never came

A woman in Amman spends an evening writing a careful introduction. A former colleague's son is looking for work, and she knows someone who might hire him. She explains who he is, why the two should meet, and sends it.

They meet. He gets the job. She hears about it, weeks later, from someone else.

No message, no call, not even a line. It would have taken him less than a minute.

This is becoming more common, and it is not a question of being busy. Thanking someone has never been easier. It is that saying thank you means admitting that someone did something for you, that you owe them a little, that you are connected. Some people would rather not carry that. It is simpler to treat the favour as something that was going to happen anyway.

But the person who made the introduction did not do it for a reward. She did it because helping felt like a way of being close to people. When the help is received in silence, the closeness she offered is quietly refused.

And the damage does not stop with her. The next time someone asks her for an introduction, she will hesitate. The next young man looking for work will find a slightly colder world, because of a message somebody else did not send.

The strange part is how little it asks. A few words. A short voice note. A wave of the hand would do.

And the person who says it gains as much as the one who hears it. Gratitude reminds us that we did not get here alone, which is almost always true, and almost always easy to forget.