Born Today?

The favors you owe that cannot be paid back with money have their own interest rate, and it compounds daily through small gestures you make without thinking. You hold the door longer, you ask how someone is doing and actually listen to the answer, you remember what they mentioned last week about their mother. Each small act is both payment and principal on something that was given to you when you needed it most. The math never balances cleanly because the original gift was never about evening the score. It was about someone choosing to see you as worth the investment when you could not see it yourself. The year ahead is the one that stops counting these exchanges as burden and starts recognizing them as the way you have learned to move through the world with your hands open.