Toward, away, against

There are three things you can do with a bid.

Turn toward it. This is very cheap. A word, looking up, an mm, anything at all. It does not require enthusiasm.

Turn away. Not hostile. You did not hear, or you heard and stayed on your phone. This is the common one, and it is the one that does the quiet damage, because nothing happens and nobody complains about nothing.

Turn against. What, can you not see I am busy.

Almost all of this is happening on ordinary afternoons when nothing is wrong, which is exactly why nobody works on it.

Two reports are worth putting under the cheap one. The first makes acknowledging another person a religious matter rather than a courtesy: he who does not thank people is not thankful to Allah. That is what a one word answer is actually doing. The second is a list of very small acts, each of them named as charity, a smile among them. That is the arithmetic of this lesson. The effect comes from the number of times, not from the size of any one of them.