Doing good Deeds without recognition

In general, “secret evidence” means information that is classified and need not be shown to the accused. Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about my own kind of secret evidence.

A French proverb that I’ve quoted a million times is “There is no such thing as love, there are only proofs of love.” Which I take to mean that I shouldn’t march around claiming to feel love, but instead must show my love through actions.

One of the most challenging of my happiness-project resolutions is “Don’t expect praise or appreciation.” I really crave those gold stars, but I’ve been trying to do loving actions – especially for the Big Man – without expecting any recognition and without expecting him even to notice.

Oftentimes, there’s no way he could know, because my loving deed is something invisible, like me not losing my temper or not nagging.

Boy, it’s kind of pathetic how much I want to get gold stars.

But this morning it occurred to me that I could think of these gestures as my secret evidence. They are proofs of love, even if other people don’t know about them.

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