Appreciation

In a world overwhelmed by an insatiable desire for recognition and personal achievement, showing appreciation to others for their role in shaping our destiny is the first aspect of our humanity that gets sacrificed with impunity. For many people it is belittling to acknowledge that their success in life can, in part, be traced to an "insignificant other" who saw the aura of success or greatness when all others saw was failure. This today constitutes our greatest tragedy: this refusal to show appreciation. Camus, however, shows that it doesn't really take rocket science to say "Thank you". After winning the Noble Prize for Literature in 1957, Albert Camus wrote this letter to his elementary school teacher.

19 November 1957

Dear Monsieur Germain,

I let the commotion around me these days subside a bit before speaking to you from the bottom of my heart. I have just been given far too great an honour, one I neither sought nor solicited.

But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened.

I don’t make too much of this sort of honour. But at least it gives me the opportunity to tell you what you have been and still are for me, and to assure you that your efforts, your work, and the generous heart you put into it still live in one of your little schoolboys who, despite the years, has never stopped being your grateful pupil. I embrace you with all my heart.

Albert Camus

Source: www.lettersofnote.com

Camus' novels worth reading: The Strange (1942) and The Plague (1947)