Please leave a message

Please leave a message after the beep … 
When was the last time you left someone a message that wasn’t out of necessity?

A birthday card. A sticky note on the fridge. A voicemail just to say you love them.

We don’t always realize it in the moment, but the smallest gestures often become the things people hold onto the longest. In this episode, I talk about why we should leave more traces of ourselves behind—and how a few thoughtful words can become something someone returns to later down the road . 

You never know which message will mean everything to someone someday.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

So this morning, I'm sitting at my breakfast table drinking my coffee, going through my phone, checking all my notifications and trying to clear them out, make sure I get back to all the people that need for me to get back to them. And I clear all my notifications except for one. I can't figure out where it's coming from. I check everything. I check my email, check my text messages, check my missed calls, and I realize it's a voicemail. I was so surprised and so excited to see who this voicemail was from because I had already called back all the people that I missed their calls yesterday. I called them before I went to bed last night. And it's a voicemail from my friend Gray. And I know that this might sound silly because like nobody leaves voicemails anymore, but it literally made my whole day. I love leaving voicemails for people. I love a voice memo, I love a voicemail, I love a handwritten birthday card, I love a sticky note, I love all of it. Now, the voicemail that my friend left me was not anything substantial. It was just him saying, Hey, sorry, I know it's after business hours, you're probably knocked out right now, but I just wanted to check on you and check on your well-being, let you know that I love you, and uh hopefully you get a chance to call me back during business hours tomorrow or something. Bye. And that was it. So simple. But it got me thinking how important this kind of stuff is. And this is gonna be a very short, quick podcast episode today, but I did feel like this was something that needed to be said and something that we all need to be reminded of. Let me tell you how important it is for you to write the birthday card, write the sticky note, write the handwritten letter, okay? Print the photos out. Write on the back of the photo, put the date on the photo. All of this digital stuff that we have right now, sure, it's nice because it can be kind of organized and like we can always keep it on a hard drive or whatever. But realistically, who does that aside from like videographers and photographers, right? Nobody really does that. But I think that having proof of life and evidence of memories that are being made, something tangible that we can hold on to is so important. And I don't want to get morbid, but I think you guys know me enough by now that it kind of happens sometimes. I just think that dealing with death is such a unique experience for each person, even though it probably all hurts the same, right? I'm just assuming I haven't lost that many people, but I'm assuming that it's about the same amount of pain for most of us. And we never know what to do with it, right? But I think that one thing that death does do is it teaches us a lot. And I cannot tell you how grateful I am to have the tangible memories that I can hold on to from me and my best friend. I have videos of us because we would vlog together. I was so embarrassed vlogging with other people. I hated having to hold my camera out in front of me and like take a video and do the thing for YouTube with all of whoever it is around, like any of my friends around. Like business stuff, it was always kind of like okay, whatever. Like they understand that this is what I have to do. But like friends, ugh, it would just make me cringe. I don't know what was up with me. But I'm so, so happy that we have photos and we have videos and I have voicemails that I still hold on to, and I have voice memos. I have a folder of voice memos and voicemails that my best friend left me. And I get to listen to her voice whenever I want now. Like I'm just so happy and so grateful to have those things. And you know what I think is so funny? You know those little like instax photos, the square ones, they've got wide ones, they've got instax mini photos. It's so funny to me that maybe it's a millennial thing, I don't know, but we all still hold on to those. And what's so funny is we know exactly, at least me, know exactly what the in-sax photos are that I have. I know exactly what they look like. And I get so excited every time that I come across one. I have a little clear plastic case that I keep them in. And sure, they're all just scattered and they just got like Sharpie written on them, or whatever it is that I wanted to write on the bottom of the of the insects is there, right? But I think it's so funny that I know exactly every single insects that I own versus like how many photos do I have on my phone? Let's check. Probably, I'm gonna guess like at least 10,000 photos on my phone. Could I tell you all the photos that I have on my phone? Absolutely not. Absolutely not. I have 6,204 photos and videos on my phone. Do I even know what's in here? Absolutely not. I have no clue. No clue. And I think that this generation, we have such a, especially Generation Z, they just film and photograph everything, but we don't have that tangible stuff to hold on to. And I just think it's so important to have that kind of stuff. Because what I've noticed about like the digital world, and I'm sorry if this is very URL versus IRL of me, but what I've noticed about the digital world is as much as we are like this all the time, we're like always like this, right? Recording everything all the time, all the time, all the time, all the time. We don't actually do we actually remember any of that stuff that we're like recording. I just don't think so. I think there's something about like the nostalgia and something about like the way that things used to be done that's just so much more special. And I don't know why we don't keep doing that. Like I think it's because we used to have to take the time to make memories, you know what I mean? Like, I think that we used to have to like intentionally carve out time and intentionally make the effort to do something, versus now it's all at our fingertips all of the time. But I don't know, I just think it's so important to like leave a voicemail. You never know who's gonna need to hear your voice and when they're gonna need to hear your voice, and when they need to hear that funny little thing that you said in your voicemail, or when they needed to hear that you loved them, or when they needed to hear that you missed them, or that you were just calling to check on them. You never know who is gonna need to hear your laugh one day. And maybe you were cracking up in a voice memo that you and your friend were sending back and forth. Maybe you were cracking up because of something that they said, maybe you were cracking up because you were being so silly, crying over a boy last week or something, right? Like, you never know who's gonna need that and when they're gonna need that, right? Someday someone somewhere is gonna need you, and I think that it's so important for them to be able to have that access to you when they need you. Anyways, um, I know this was a very impromptu episode, and I don't know what else I really need to dig into other than I pulled a page up that I think is a little bit relevant, not necessarily to leaving a voicemail, a voice memo, or a card to somebody specifically, but just as a reminder to be kind to each other. It's so important, and you never know what your kindness is truly doing for someone else. So it's just a reminder to show each other a lot of love, okay? Whenever you have love to spare, show it to someone else because it is very important, okay? Every human being you know, everyone you walk past on the street, everyone you judge, everyone you think you dislike, everyone that you think is nothing like you, they are also fighting a quiet battle inside of them. There is a hurt inside of them that feels quite a lot like your own. The faces of our demons may differ. We may call them various names, and we may feel their presence more at some times than others, but at the end of the day, they all haunt us in similar ways. This is what it really means to come into a deep awareness of what it is to be human. To understand that we all live with an internal longing of some kind. Have compassion because no matter how it appears on the surface, every person, including you, has a mountain all their own. And that's all. I'm sorry for a very impromptu, like super duper short episode, but I just felt like it was important and something that I needed to say, and something that we all need to be reminded of that we're not reminded of often enough. And yeah, that's kind of it. Oh, look at that. My cousin's calling me right now. Perfect timing. I hope my cousin leaves me a voicemail. I bet you he's going to. But I want to thank you guys so, so much for taking the time to listen to me and just giving me the space to talk. Even if it is just a couple of minutes of your time, it really means the world to me, you guys, because I think this kind of stuff is so important. And that's exactly why I share it. Whether it's two minutes, 20 minutes, or two hours long. I appreciate you guys for spending your time with me today. And um, I love you so much. I will talk to you soon. Bye.