If you practice generosity in your assumptions, it helps you be more useful to others.
If you’ve ever tried any kind of gratefulness practice, like thinking of someone to write a thank you note to or writing down things you’re thankful for every day, you might notice your logical brain raising objections.
“OK, sure, I could be thankful for this person doing this thing that benefited me, but in all honesty, I probably would’ve achieved the same outcome anyway. They weren’t really the causal agent in that outcome, I was.”
Life is too complex to reduce to a linear chain of causality. The path we take in life could be radically different if not for a few tiny variables. Yes, you are the dominant agent in your own life, and it’s possible many helpful people along the way were nice-to-haves rather than necessities. But if you try to parse it out and figure out exactly who gets what credit, you’ll develop a stingy view of causality.
Not only will this make gratefulness and generosity towards others harder, it will make you less capable of seeing your own goodness and ability to improve others lives and the world.
Look for excuses to thank others for even the smallest contributions. You’ll begin to see causality in a more expansive and generous manner, full of infinite contributors, mysterious, and joyful. This will be of great aid when you are at your lowest point. It will be easier to see the possibility of your own unseen contributions to the lives of others – the Remnant out there that you may be supporting in silence.