Today I realized something.
What lasts isn’t always what you did. It’s how you made people feel.
I was thinking about someone from high school recently. We were only classmates for one year. One year out of an entire lifetime. And yet, more than 25 years later, when I think about them, the first thing that comes to mind isn’t what they looked like, what grades they got, or what they accomplished.
I remember how they made me feel.
And unfortunately, it wasn’t a good feeling.
Isn’t that strange?
How someone can occupy such a small chapter of your life and still leave behind a feeling that survives decades. It made me realize that people forget details, but they rarely forget emotions. They forget conversations, but they remember how they felt after talking to you. They forget the exact words, but they remember whether they felt seen, valued, welcomed, embarrassed, or small.
I think about that a lot these days.
Because when we’re younger, we spend so much time worrying about being impressive. Being successful. Being noticed. Being right.
But maybe the more important question is: how do people feel after they’ve spent time with us?
Do they feel lighter?
Do they feel accepted?
Do they feel safe enough to be themselves?
Or do they leave carrying something they didn’t have before?
The older I get, the more I realize that kindness isn’t a small thing. Neither is cruelty. We carry both much longer than we think.
And maybe that’s why I’ve become more intentional with how I move through the world. Not because I’m perfect. Not because I always get it right. But because I know firsthand how long a feeling can stay with someone.
Twenty-five years is a long time.
Long enough to forget faces.
Long enough to forget names.
But apparently not long enough to forget how someone made you feel.
And maybe that’s the legacy we leave behind more often than we realize. 🤍