Because if I'm scared to say it, it's probably worth saying

December 15 2009

Who really matters to you?

The Internet makes it easy to matter a little bit to a lot of people.

Hundreds, maybe thousands of people will send you an e-mail, read your tweets, look at your photos and think of you over the course of a month.

But how many of those people really matter to you? And how much time do you invest in those relationships?

Something I read today stopped me in my tracks because of how it answers those questions. It’s a quote from an entrepreneur named Rajesh Setty in a new ebook called What Matters Now:

If you are truly enriching someone’s life, they will typically miss you in their past. They think their lives would have been even better if they had met you earlier.

You can tell who really matters to you by looking back and asking yourself, who do I wish had been there sooner?

For me, there are a few dozen people who really matter — people I wish had been there to change my life sooner. Their faces come to me in a rush.

The sad thing is, I rarely talk to many of them. Some of them I don’t talk to at all. They may have forgotten about me or assumed I didn’t care.

I can’t stay in touch with them because I’m too busy focusing on everyone else, the people who are useful (or just noisy) here and now.

My absent friends and mentors don’t care about being useful here and now. They just care about me. And because they care, they can wait — until tomorrow or next week or during the holidays, whenever things quiet down.

The problem is that things never quiet down. But in the meantime, the relationships that really matter, they sure do.

Share your story: Who do you miss in your past? How would your life be different if you had met them earlier? Leave a comment

Tweet this post

Tags: , , ,
  • Sardonic18
    Some friends are for a reason, some are for a season, and some are for a lifetime.
  • Blake, it's funny, I was just talking to one of those people tonight, a friend from college who is now about 1500 miles away. I have a few very close friends from college that are like family to me. Sometimes, we won't be in touch for weeks or even months at a time, but you know they're great friends when, even after all that time, you can hop right back into conversation as usual.

    I also have a few teachers from high school and some mentors from college that are the same. The unfortunate thing is that it is usually them bugging me for an update. I should probably change that.
  • It's such a good feeling to keep those friendships going over the time and space that inevitably comes between you. Sounds like you're pretty good at it Jameson!
blog comments powered by Disqus