All of the good I put out into the world always comes back to me.

Returns do come, though almost never from the direction you sent it. The colleague you covered for in 2016 is not the one who helps you; her old flatmate is, having heard the story once at a dinner.

That delay is why generosity has to be practised without a ledger. A ledger makes you resentful in year two, which is right before the useful part.

And some of it never comes back at all. You will help people who vanish.

The habit is still worth keeping, because it slowly changes what gets said about you in rooms you are not in — and that description does more work in a life than almost anything done in person.