No Need to Thank Me

I can’t take a thank you. It sounds odd, a little embarrassing, but I really don’t know how to take it when someone expresses genuine gratitude. Like, what do I do with my hands? Do I bow? Do I “thank” the thank you? This isn’t the casual “thanks” you toss out when someone holds the door either. I mean sincere appreciation—heartfelt thank-yous that are meant to make you feel all fuzzy inside. The kind that lets you know “I see you, and I appreciate you.” Those, to me, are the hardest to hear. 

It makes me feel exposed—opening myself up and being emotionally vulnerable. What do you mean you’re grateful for me? That I really had a profound impact on you? Stop that. I remember going to the season two awards ceremony in my freshman year. Our Athletic Director  gave a speech, thanking each individual player on our team. When he got to me, I just couldn’t take it. My eyes darted around, looking for something—anything—to distract myself from the sincerity right in front of me. 

Maybe I’m just talking into a void here. But I can’t shake the feeling that something bigger is at play here. It couldn’t just be me. So I did what any rational person would do, I turned it into an experiment.

First, I had to make sure this was a controlled study. I selected 20 subjects ranging from my closest friends to classmates who let me copy their homework ten minutes before class.  Each thank you was delivered with: sustained eye contact, measured tone, a sincere smile, and their name, then a heartfelt “thank you.” For scientific consistency, I also resisted the urge to laugh during the whole procedure.

Fourteen of my twenty subjects immediately got uncomfortable—laughing nervously, glancing at the floor, or just outright telling me to stop. Someone even asked me if I “had a fever.” These thank-yous were nothing special either. I’d thank them for being a friend, or some random favour they did for me. Yet, the results fell right in line with my hypothesis. Clearly, there’s something up with a thank you.

But why did it end up like this? My theory is that it lies with vulnerability. It’s necessary that we open up to one another, to connect with one another. Today, there is far less real human connection because people are less capable of being vulnerable. Part of that can be attributed to screens. The advent of social media—which intended to connect all of us—actually kept us apart. What once could’ve been a physical conversation is now simply a text. When a difficult discussion occurs we just shut off our phones, and ourselves. Somewhere along the line we stopped saying thank you and started sending emojis. 

It’s a defense against real emotions. What makes gratitude especially uncomfortable is that it’s unavoidable. When someone thanks you, they’re not just acknowledging you—they’re seeing you. You can’t hide, you can’t reject it. You have to be in it, face it, and open up to it. Today, we don’t remember how to do that.

There’s still hope, though.

In my experiment, not everyone responded with immediate disgust. Six people, actually, genuinely seemed to light up. Their faces softened, they smiled, they started blushing; it didn’t feel transactional. For a moment, it felt like the formation of a real connection.

It left me with the question: what’s different? Why didn’t they react adversely, like I and my 14 subjects did? What edge could they have? I followed up with them after the test, questioning them on everything I could think of. Family background, sibling count, current relationships, possible spy history? 

What I found was that these people loved other people. It seems simple, but these days it’s rarer than you’d think. They responded to kindness with more kindness; with no assumption of ill-health or ulterior motives. And to be honest, it felt good. Seeing that my gratitude gave someone else joy was rewarding. I felt a little fuzzy inside.

So I’m trying to get better at it. I want to be the person who responds to kindness with kindness, who opens up to that human connection—who holds optimism in every human being. Next time someone thanks me, I won’t fiddle with my hands, try to bow, or somehow reverse psychology them. I’ll just smile and say, “You’re welcome.”