When did Gratitude Turn Into a Deliverable ?

I’ve been thinking about something strange happening around us. Increasingly, I’m noticing people outsourcing even the smallest human gestures, birthday wishes, congratulatory messages, festival greetings, even notes of gratitude. Not corporate announcements, not brand communications, but the very things that are supposed to come from a place of genuine connection. People, smart, capable, connected people; are outsourcing. The  birthday wish crafted by a PR agency. A gratitude post written by someone who wasn’t even in the room when the moment happened. A “heartfelt note” scheduled like a campaign deliverable. Some of these are people who, at least on the surface, appear close to the ones they’re “wishing.” People who have supposedly influenced their lives, shaped their careers, or stood by them during important moments. Yet the communication goes out through a PR agency; templated, polished, strategically timed, designed to be seen rather than felt. And I find myself thinking; When did a simple human gesture become so heavy that we needed someone else to hold it?  I mean, truly when? Is Everyone Really That Busy?

We all claim to be busy. It’s the easiest modern excuse, almost a default greeting now:

“How are you?”
“Oh, busy yaar.”

But are we actually busy or is “busy” the comfortable blanket that covers our discomfort with being genuine? Because saying “thank you” takes seconds. Remembering someone and sending them a message doesn’t need a 30-minute block on the calendar. Expressing warmth doesn’t need an assistant, a designer, or a PR firm. So what’s going on? 

There was a time when a simple “thank you” meant something. It took a moment to say, a few minutes to write, a slight emotional effort, but it was real. Today, somehow, that moment has turned into a “task,” bundled with the hundred other things to be delegated. A PR team drafts a message, finds an appropriate photo, posts it with hashtags, and checks engagement. It doesn’t matter if the sender barely glanced at it. The ritual has replaced the reason. We’ve reached a point where even intimacy is broadcasted like a press release. Somewhere along the way, we professionalised even our emotional expressions. It’s as if sincerity now needs a strategy deck. We started curating ourselves; filtering everything, polishing everything, reducing life into little “announcements” that must look good on a timeline. And once everything is performance, why not hire professionals to make it look better? But in doing so, maybe we outsourced something else; the awkward, unpolished, real parts of being human.  The little stumbles in how we express affection. The imperfect words. The raw sincerity. Those didn’t fit the aesthetic.

Maybe this shift didn’t happen suddenly. Maybe it started the day we began curating ourselves; polishing captions, editing life into bite-sized public consumption units, optimising for likes, reach, and relevance. When communication became performance, sincerity became optional. And once everything becomes performance, outsourcing becomes logical. Why bother writing a heartfelt note when a professional can craft something more impressive? Why risk being vulnerable when someone else can package your sentiment neatly? But here’s the irony: the more impressive it looks, the less it means. We’ve reached a strange place where even affection has an audience. A birthday post isn’t really for the person—it’s for everyone watching. A thank you note becomes a branding exercise. A gesture becomes content. And once you start performing connection, authenticity becomes optional. Maybe even inconvenient. It suddenly makes sense why someone hires a PR agency: their personal life has turned into a stage, and the show must go on.

It’s easy to blame busyness. Everyone is busy. People love saying they are busy. “Busy” has become a badge, a justification, a social currency.  But I doubt time is the real barrier here. Writing a genuine greeting takes 30 seconds. Saying “thank you” takes 5. Sending love or appreciation takes almost no time at all. The truth might be harder to admit:

• Maybe we’re uncomfortable expressing authentic emotion.
• Maybe we’re afraid of not sounding polished enough.
• Maybe we’ve convinced ourselves that everything we do needs to look “professional.”
• Or maybe we’ve forgotten what personal connection feels like outside of public platforms.

But Something Gets Lost in All This The trouble isn’t that these messages look too polished. It’s that they feel weightless. Like an echo without a voice. Like a sentence that hits all the right notes but none of the right places. When affection becomes outsourced, it stops being a gesture and starts becoming a product. And products are rarely personal. Think about it messages that look perfect but feel empty. Words that impress but do not touch. Salutations with reach but without soul.

Sometimes I wonder if the real issue isn’t time but courage. It takes courage to be simple. To be direct. To message someone with no perfect wording, no fancy image, no strategy. Just:

“Hey, I remembered you today.”
or
“Thank you. You mattered.”

This doesn't need consultants. It need presence.

I like to think that sincerity survives not through grand gestures but through these tiny, imperfect ones. Maybe the rebellion now is not silence but authenticity. Not detachment but deliberate presence. To express gratitude ourselves, even if clumsily. To wish someone personally—even if late. To keep some parts of our emotional life unpolished, unfiltered, and entirely ours. Because if we hand over every act of expression, what remains for us?
If everything is curated, what do we actually feel? And if we can’t say thank you on our own, what does that say about what the thanks is worth?

I’m not judging anyone. We’re all trying to navigate a world that demands constant visibility and constant performance. But every now and then, maybe it’s worth stepping off that stage. Closing the laptop. Putting the phone down. And just sending a message ourselves, on the phone or in person; imperfect, unoptimised, human. Because the day we outsource our gratitude entirely…we risk waking up to relationships that look perfect on the outside but feel hollow on the inside. And that, to me, feels like a far greater cost than any PR fee.

C