The Art of Encouragement · The Practice
Thank You, Said by Name
Yesterday this practice argued for the specific word. Today — Wednesday, November 11, Veterans Day — it gets its clearest test of the year: a nation saying thank you, all at once, in general. The practice's answer is the same as Tuesday's. Say it by name.
The honest answer first: a thank-you addressed to everyone reaches no one the way a thank-you addressed to a person does. If there is a veteran in your life — and for most of us there is, in the family, at work, in the congregation, on the street — today is the day to thank that person by name, for the service that was theirs, in words that could belong to no one else. General gratitude is a poster. A named thank-you is encouragement, and encouragement is this brand's whole subject.
General is a guess; a name is a witness
It is Tuesday's lesson wearing today's clothes. "Thank you for your service" said to a crowd is true and still thin. Said to one person — with their branch, their years, the thing their service made possible in your own life named out loud — it becomes a witness: I know what you did, and I have not forgotten. People carry a sentence like that for years. Some of them have told us so, about sentences far smaller.
How to say it today
Keep it short and make it exact. Name the person. Name one true thing about their service or about who they became through it. Say it today — a call, a note, a knock on the door — because encouragement, as this practice keeps learning, has a shelf life, and gratitude's is shortest of all on the one day set aside for it. Do not make it about yourself, and do not attach anything to it. A thank-you with an errand inside it is an errand.
Wednesday's practice
One name, one call or note, today. If the veteran you would thank is no longer living, thank their family by name — they served a service of their own, and they are thanked least of all. Then write the name down where you will see it next November, because the practice that depends on a holiday will miss the other 364 days when a quieter thank-you might matter even more.