Prefer to watch instead? Watch this reflection on YouTube.
Every Sunday morning, I send one of these reflections to my email subscribers.
Once in a while, after the email goes out, I’ll glance through the subscriber list. I recognize a few names, but most of them I don’t. More often than not, all I see is an email address.
A few weeks ago, I was at a gathering where I met several people for the first time. As we talked, a few of them mentioned they had been reading these reflections.
That caught me off guard. Not because I didn’t think anyone was reading, but because those email addresses had suddenly become real people standing in front of me. Until that moment, I had never given much thought to where these reflections go after I click “Publish.”
I haven’t been able to shake that thought. It reminded me how little we actually get to see.
Most of us never find out what happens after a conversation ends. We don’t know if something we said stayed with another person. We don’t know if a small kindness made a difficult day a little easier. We don’t know if simply listening helped someone feel less alone. We rarely get to see that part of the story.
The more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve realized this isn’t really about writing. It’s about all the ways our lives intersect without us ever knowing what happens next.
Every day, our lives brush up against other people’s lives in ways we’ll probably never know. It might be a smile to a stranger who was having a difficult day. A genuine, “Thank you. I hope the rest of your day goes well,” to the person behind the register. A moment of patience when someone expected frustration. A conversation that leaves another person feeling just a little less alone.
Most of us wouldn’t think twice about those moments. We often forget them almost as quickly as they happen. But we have no way of knowing what they meant to someone else.
Like many people who create something, I’ve caught myself looking at numbers. Website visits. Video views. Subscribers. Followers. Those numbers can be encouraging. But they never tell the whole story. The things that matter most rarely show up on a dashboard.
Maybe a reflection reminds someone they’re not alone. Maybe someone who received an unexpected kindness offers that same kindness to someone else later that day. Or maybe nothing dramatic happens at all. Maybe someone simply carries a little more hope into the rest of their day.
The truth is, we’ll probably never know.
And when I think about it, that’s probably true for all of us.
Most of the meaningful things we do don’t come with a report telling us what happened next. We don’t always see what happens after our lives brush against someone else’s. They’re simply carried forward in ways we’ll probably never witness.
I’ve come to believe that’s simply part of being human. Long after we’ve forgotten a moment, someone else may still remember it.
That’s a humbling thought and, at least for me, a hopeful one.
