Parable of Influence

You know, it's wild—the idea that we, as humans, have become so conditioned. We base our impact or influence on the world down to a single reaction. A like. A heart. An emoji. A generated response that speaks to our feel-good hormones and says, "You've done well."

It's a sad reality, because we feed into this conditioning. It then becomes the way we value ourselves, the metric by which we gauge events, creative outputs, and moments within our lives. I was grappling with this thought the other day.

You look at your post, your content. Perhaps there are one or two likes here, or three there, or maybe, even worse, no reactions at all. It's just... there.

But then, I find myself browsing the internet, scrolling through social media, and investing ten minutes indulging in someone's insightful and very thoughtful post. And then, I do the unthinkable. I too just continue to scroll along, not taking the two seconds to double tap.

It made me realize how minimal those little reactions are. As appealing as they can be, how little do they really mean to your value, your impact, your influence?

You know, the real value comes when you run into someone, or you're having a conversation, and someone says, "Hey, I saw that post you made the other day. The one about such and such. I appreciate it. I needed that. Thank you."

The first chance you get, you rush back to your computer or pull out your phone. You scroll back to that post, maybe even reread it yourself. Then, you look in the comments or at the likes, and you wonder, "Did they like it?" And you realize, they didn't. They didn't "like" it at all.