When we cast our bread upon the waters we can presume that someone downstream whose face we will never know will benefit from our action, as we who are downstream from another will profit from the grantor's gift.
It seems that most of us could benefit from a brush with a near-fatal disaster to help us recognise the important things that we are too defeated or embittered to recognise from day to day.
Women are the most charitable creatures, and the most troublesome. He who shuns women passes up the trouble, but also the benefits. He who puts up with them gains the benefits, but also the trouble. As the saying goes, there's no honey without bees.
There is in general good reason to suppose that in several respects the gods could all benefit from instruction by us human beings. We humans are - more humane.
It is our duty not to not only hold fast, but to hold forth the Word of life; not only to hold fast for our own benefit, but to hold it forth for the benefit of others, to hold it forth as the candlestick holds forth the candle, which makes it appear to advantage all around, or as the luminaries of the heavens, which shed their influences far and wide.
In your judgment virtue requires no reward, and is to be sought for itself, unaccompanied by external benefits.
[Lat., Judice te mercede caret, per seque petenda est
Externis virtus incomitata bonis.]
If you're a poor worker - this is for new workers coming into the workplace - your benefits will increase at the current rate of increase. If you're a wealthier worker, your benefits would increase at the rate of inflation. And those changes would affect positively the unfunded liabilities inherent in Social Security.