[2021-04-06] Reach out and touch someone
As I write this post, I'm sitting in a sunny corner of my deck. The sky is blue. The sun is shining. The breeze is refreshing.
I'm flipping through a new book that came into my life recently: Do One Thing Every Morning to Make Your Day. I land on a quote attributed to Maya Angelou that speaks to me:
I've learned that every day you should reach out and touch someone. People love a warm hug, or just a friendly pat on the back.
I'm inspired by the advice to reach out and touch someone. Today's success in that regard involved helping two people to reconnect. A friend contacted me recently to see whether I might have the email address of a former colleague of ours. He wanted to share some photos from a work trip they had taken together more than a decade ago. I reached out to a third person, who lives and works in the right neck of the woods. She emailed a fourth person, who provided contact information for the former colleague. This was six degrees of separation in action—the idea that, on average, individuals are six, or fewer, social connections away from each other. I'm happy to have enabled two former colleagues to reminisce about a shared experience and to catch up after several years.
These kinds of connections are more necessary than ever. As COVID-driven restrictions extend beyond a full year, it's easy for all of us to focus on how much we've lost. I might feel that way too, with public health measures compounded by my self-imposed isolation as I sought treatment for ovarian cancer. Almost overnight, I went from interacting with dozens of individuals every day before my diagnosis to seeing very few people—mostly health care professionals. But as this blog—which I launched to provide updates on my journey back to health—has permeated the lives of more and more relatives, friends, coworkers and strangers, I have connected and reconnected with hundreds of people. I hope that each post is like the warm hug Maya Angelou referenced in her quote. In return, I receive many warm hugs each day in the form of emails, texts and social media comments. I respond to every single one.
Coincidentally, earlier today I read an article about Ryan Reynolds in which he describes himself as being "weirdly reachable." The article's author, Entrepreneur magazine Editor in Chief Jason Feifer, explains that at the end of his recent interview with the Canadian actor, Reynolds said: "If you have any follow-up questions, I can hop right on or email some answers back, or whatever works. I’m weirdly reachable." Feifer, who called this exchange the favourite part of his conversation with Reynolds, advised: "The next time you feel too busy to reply to someone, remember that line." Drawing on his own experience, Feifer added:
If you’ve ever emailed or DM’d me, you know: I respond. I do this for many reasons, but chief among them is that I hate when I write people and they don’t respond. I have stopped following people’s work because they didn’t reply to me—not because I’m some fancy guy, but because I think that replying is the decent thing to do.
I, too, have always found that responding to a comment or message is the decent thing to do. It says: "I appreciate your comment, thanks for making me feel important, you're important too." In a work context, replying to an email communicates: "I'm on it, I read your message, I value your input."
Beyond being the decent thing to do, responding to comments encourages further interaction. In publishing my blog posts, I'm not simply spouting my views. I'm engaging with readers, listening to their views and evolving my thinking, and benefiting from their experience and recommendations. More importantly, I'm demonstrating that I am a real person who cares about others. As Dale Carnegie wrote in How to Win Friends and Influence People:
If you want others to like you, if you want to develop real friendships, if you want to help others at the same time as you help yourself, keep this principle in mind...Become genuinely interested in other people.
I am genuinely interested in other people, and their interest in and support of me has made all the difference in my cancer journey. To Maya Angelou's quote "people love a warm hug," I would add "and they will return that hug many times over."
