A 40+ year reminder that words matter
WHEN SOMEONE YOU NEVER MET emails you today and says that something you wrote in 1980 at the age of 15 is still making an impact in the life of his family right now, what do you say?
Well this weekend it happened to me and I am still not sure what to say…I started with thank you (and that feels woefully inadequate).
Let me tell you what happened.
In 1980, when I was a sophomore in high school, our English teacher had us write an essay on a topic that mattered to us…it was basically a creative writing exercise.
I wrote an article basically saying don’t always follow the pack, don’t be afraid to *not* conform sometimes and the cool kids really don’t know anything more than anyone else.
In essence. – ‘Don’t bother to try and keep up with the Joneses’.
My teacher liked it and asked me to submit it to our local newspaper, the Buffalo News. They published articles written by local high schoolers every month. For my efforts, I got a gift certificate from a local record store.
I’d long ago forgotten all of this.
What my younger self didn’t take into account was just how big that newspaper readership was…or that many people I never met would read my story.
Fast forward to this weekend when I got an email from a gentleman named Eric, whom I have never met or communicated with previous to this weekend.
In his email, he introduced himself and included a photo of my actual article, cut out from the Buffalo News by his Mother in 1980. His Mom gave my essay to him because she thought my high school words would resonate with him. It did.
He held on to the article all this time and has it posted in his house for his own children to read (that’s a picture of the article from his house).
Wow. This humbled me so greatly I was speechless.
But the greatest message for me, besides his compliment of keeping my article, was this: we just don’t know how what we say or write can help or hurt people who we’ve never met.
Conceptually we all understand this, but Eric’s email made it real in a way I could not know until I felt it.
I will share now that I will work to make my words more positive (in person, in emails and online) because when people experience what I say…it can have a bigger impact than I might have first considered. I will work (cause I’m not perfect) to lead with positivity in what I say, whenever possible.
Bring others up.
