zero. but really?

My personality seems to make me a "giving person" by making me assist, help, explain or teach various things naturally. This fact sometimes makes me think whether or not the time and effort I put into these things are worthful...of course, this is not really an issue for the people I really care about, but my nature extends the range to some "not as important" people too. When I do things like this, a slight expectation zips through my mind. I mean, I'm not expecting anything in "return", but naturally, these thoughts do come up. These expectation in most cases aren't fulfilled, which makes me really disappointed, making me think like it's not acutually worth doing these services.

My father once told me his opinion. He said that when this issue is seen from a "lifelong" perspective, everyone ends up not gaining anything, nor losing anything...a plus minus zero. However, my current situation makes it hard to take in this hypothesis. Am I getting some wonderful things in return, but am not being able to sense them from my lack of sensitivity? If this is true, maybe his theory is right...but who knows? How can we measure them? Impossible, right? We'll never know... Even though I'm making a complaint on this blog, I probably won't be able to resist continuing on like this. I guess it's my destiny or something...sigh.