GOALS

Helping with errands is still low on the bar. Cooking a meal is still what adults are supposed to do. Paying your bills on time is still just being functional. The bar is where it is and it should stay there.

But there is a difference between giving someone a standing ovation for showing up and just saying thank you. One warps how they see themselves. The other is basic consideration.

Low effort should not be treated like high effort. But it should still be acknowledged. Those are two different things and people keep mixing them up.

People act like basic decency is either a miracle or an irrelevance. Neither is true. Someone held a door. You say thank you. It is not "GOALS." That is it. If someone does something small, acknowledge it. If someone does something significant, value it properly. But stop pretending every minor act deserves the same applause as real effort.

Proportional. That is the word. Appreciation that matches the weight of the thing. Not inflated, not withheld. Just accurate.

When everything gets praised equally the scale breaks. But the answer to a broken scale is not to stop measuring. It is to get the calibration right.

A nod for a nod. A thank you for a thank you.