Mister Micawber

I want to say thank you to people I will never meet.

When I was young, you paid for things I could not have paid for myself.

You ensured I was born fit and healthy and (relatively) normal. You helped pay for my education, which taught me to read, to write, and to make sense of the world. When I needed glasses, I got them - and an eye patch which allowed me to fulfil my calling as a very small pirate. When I broke my arm (twice - thank you for supporting a child of limited coordination), it was fixed.

Most of the time, I didn't notice any of this happening - but happen it very much did.

I grew up with the quiet confidence that if something went wrong, there was a system there to catch me, not because I had proved myself deserving, but because I was a child, and children are occasionally unlucky, sometimes fragile, often in need of help and almost always worryingly stupid.

You didn't know me and you definitely weren't thanked at the time. You didn't get to choose me, but you supported me anyway.

Now I find myself on the other side of that arrangement.

Some of what I have earned will pay your pension, or maybe the pension of somebody you love. Some of it will educate your children, children I will never meet or indeed call my own but are deserving of my support simply by being born.

This is how a society works when it is at its best: quietly, unwittingly, without demanding gratitude or keeping score (although in case you are, I'm probably still on the wrong side of the ledger).

Thank you for allowing me to become me. I wouldn't have been able to without you.

And I'm not saying everything was perfect or that it couldn't be better or that we shouldn't strive to make it so, but you gave generously and I accepted gratefully (and let's face it thoughtlessly).

I only hope my shoulders have grown broad enough to carry forward some of the kindness that once carried me.