I often hear people say that they don’t owe anyone anything, we haven’t taken anyone’s favor (ehsan). Whenever I hear people say that , I immediately wonder how lonely and unloved they must feel.

When people say we have never taken anyone’s ehsan (favor), it tells me a lot about them. How they view favors, only in terms of its monetary value. Their urgency to pay it and get it off the books is a deep desire to equalize. Even though when they took the favor,  the inequality was explicit in their minds, not necessarily in the lenders. When you ask someone for something you need , it was at a time when you most needed it. You paid it back at a time when they didn’t need it. Its explicit value may be the same but its implicit value is not.

Any act of kindness towards us is a favor and carries a debt. The debt can be emotional (good deed, kind gesture, support), or financial (loan, monetary help, expenditure). It’s monetary value, is the only liability portion of it, the rest of it is an asset. When we pay back our financial debts it is important to retain the emotional debt of that transaction. When you try to erase it, you have gotten rid of an asset not just a liability.

Just because it didn’t carry a monetary value or in some cases the monetary component was paid back doesn’t mean the debt ended. Only its monetary liability ended,  its emotional assets carry forth. One should never forget these debts because  they enrich our lives, they connect us through bonds of giving. They remind us that we are loved enough that someone was willing to do something for us and our loved ones. Being loved is an important human need.

Growing up , I always remember my parents repeatedly telling us stories of all the characters in their lives who played a role. I find them even today repeating those stories. My parents will often recall the friend who took them to Saudi Arabia, the friend who helped him get a job, the relatives who stayed with us and enriched our lives by giving us love, the person who helped us get a piece of land or built our house. Childhood stories of uncle and Aunty Sharma, Nomani sahab, Uncle and Aunty Kazmi, Oma……. Endless stories of friends and families and how they did something for them or their loved ones. They could have easily remembered these stories in context of what they did for them or remembered them from the perspective of how they were repayments for things they had done or in many cases recalled them as being paid back or simply as inconveniences. Instead in every story they told us, they chose to focus on what each one gave them rather than what they took from them.

By sharing these stories, they have also tied us in a bond of love with all those people. Some of whom we knew and some we never met. But just knowing so many people gave us so much, is a feeling of being loved. Being cared for. Being cherished. Being remembered.

The only way to repay an emotional debt is to remember it and repay it through emotions. By appreciating and remembering the lender. In doing so, we are not only enriching ourselves but also the lender. When we remember what someone has done for us and remind our children of it , we are not burdening them under the weight of debt rather we are enriching them with the asset of love. We are creating links and ties, connected through the chords and bonds of love, care, concern of those who undertook that lending.

When some one does something for us , it is important to remember that they didn’t do it because it was the best financial decision, but rather because it was the best emotional decision. Its origination fee was emotions and its closing cost need to also be emotions. 

Most of the happiest people I know believe there were many people behind them and their success. Some of the unhappiest people believe they are alone, they don’t need anyone, they don’t owe anything. Neither love nor wealth can ever be generated or truly cherished in loneliness but only in togetherness.