Greetings from me and my morning coffee. I’m in a cosy little café. The warm light created by the candles is in stark contrast to the cold tiles and metal hooks on the walls of the main room. This used to be a butcher. Its name is German and a nice little play on words. The coffee is good…well, it’s at about 70% of Wellington-coffee-quality, which is pretty close to as good as it gets in Europe (honestly, living in Wellington turns you into a proper coffee snob… Dear Welly Friends, please have a coffee for me, preferably at the Beach House Café or at Coene’s and enjoy the sea views while you are there). Of course, this café has eggs on the menu, too, so in the grand scheme of things, this setup is pretty ideal. For me.
But enough of my culinary preferences for beige food and drinks mixed with puns.
Today’s blog is about all the messages we meant to send. For weeks. Life has a way of distracting us from keeping in touch and saying the things we want to say. Other tasks become more urgent: getting groceries, looking after the kids, getting more work done, exercising, cleaning the house … <insert your own collection of reasons why you are too busy to take two minutes here >. The list of potential excuses is long. I am sure you have your own.
But in the back of your mind, the thought keeps lingering, like a cloud stuck between mountains on a still day: I should really message so-and-so again, I haven’t talked to <person> in ages.
Today’s blog is an invitation to send one message. Just one. Send it to
That friend whom you haven’t talked to in ages, but you kind of really want to
Your colleague whom you wanted to tell that they did a good job with something
Your sibling, whom you haven’t really talked to in a little while, maybe because you are really close and you know when you chat next time, it will be like you just saw each other yesterday.
Your parents or grandparents
Your cousin. Maybe you were close as kids, and you don’t see much of each other now, but now and then, you remember a nice moment.
A teammate - current or former - I am sure they would love to hear from you
That friend you miss laughing and being silly with
A former colleague whom you miss
… someone else…?
So, as you look through my incomplete list of potential recipients of your short little message, who comes to your mind first? Whom would you message? And what would you want to tell them?
I have already written about how the quality of our relationships significantly influences how we perceive the quality of our lives. In many ways, this blog is an extension of that. Maybe you have already come across Bonnie Ware’s book The Top 5 Regrets of the Dying. Admittedly, I haven’t actually read the book myself, but she does also have a short blog on the topic. And, it turns out that ‘I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends’ is one of the Top 5 regrets people have shared with her at the end of their lives. Thanks to Bonnie, we know that now and don’t have to find ourselves in the same position.
So, take a minute or two today and send that one person a message. Whatever words you find and whatever you end up saying to them will really say, Hey, I am thinking of you & I want to stay in touch. And that is a really nice message to receive. Any day.
Now, please excuse me. I have a message to send. :)
Key points:
Sometimes, we get too busy to stay in touch with people who matter to us.
Messaging them will only take two minutes.
All you are really saying is ‘Hey, I am thinking of you.’ - Who wouldn’t like to hear that?
Reflection questions:
Who would you message?
What’s been your excuse?
… <send the message>
How do you feel now?
