song: nobody by hiatusread time: 5 minutes if i can be honest — people are driving me insane lately. there, i said it it’s true. i love people. i live and breathe to help people, but what’s frustrating is that there are a whole lot of takers in this world. i am on page two of writing, but you’ll only see 5 sentences before this one. why? to be frank— i’m not sure my rants from above are ready to reach the surface yet. i am currently listening to a song by hiatus called “nobody”. you should listen to it. it’s magical. midway through the song, the melodies break and a voice asks, “what is your name?” a shy voice then replies, “my name is nobody.” a dialogue then begins between the two voices: the first voice, strong in stature, says “excuse me?” second voice: “my name is exaybachay. he who talks loud, says nothing.” first voice: “i thought you said your name was nobody.” second voice: “i would prefer to be called nobody.” see, here is my fear: my fear is that our actions are making people feel like nobodies. our generation is lacking in intentionality. we take part in friendships and community when it’s convenient for us. if the person is gone, out of sight, then they are out of mind. however, that’s not how community works. or at least, not the way community was intended to work. community was meant to strengthen you, make you be better, help you realize you are important, challenge you to push forward, encourage you when you’ve hit a low, and replenish you when you feel empty. community was designed to remember you when you feel forgotten. the idea of authentic community has become so much of a trend, that it’s losing it’s meaning. it’s become a catch-phrase more than a genuine way of living. i hear people say one-liners like “we are welcoming”, “we foster genuine community”, “we are a place for everybody”. but what i am seeing, and even experiencing, is something quite opposite. you see, community, at it’s finest is not exclusive. a truly authentic community doesn’t have to sell itself and talk about how authentic it is, it merely does. it talks less, and does more. instead of saying what i don’t want to see anymore in our generation — i’ll tell you what i hope to see, but mostly, what i hope to become. so here it is — i want to take every interaction i have with people as an opportunity to make somebody feel important. i want to spend less time judging someone, in order to take more time to get to know the person and their story. i want to be so inclusive that people, even strangers, know they are welcomed to anything and everything i do. i want to be the person who is constantly finding a way to gather friends and strangers together in order to do life, collaborate, and make memories. i want to be the person that regardless of how busy i am, carves out time for people. i want to be the person who you met one time, but will send you an encouraging text just because. i want to be the person who you love talking to because there is a beautiful exchange of stories, ideas, and dreams. i want to be the person who will walk across the room just to say “hello”. i want to be the person who gives more than i take. i want to be the person who listens to you. i want to be the person who doesn’t care about your social status, but cares about the core of who you are. i want to be the person who makes you feel replenished after one conversation. i want to be the person who makes you feel known. i want to be the person who treats you to a cup of coffee, because that’s what friends do. i want to be the person who will fly across the country to hang out with you, regardless if it costs a little bit of money. i want to be the person who makes you feel remembered, when you are MIA. i want to be the person who you can talk to everyday or once a year, but makes you feel like no time has passed. i want to be the person that makes you feel seen when you feel overlooked. i want to be the person who remembers the little details from our last conversation and checks in to see how life is going. i want to be the person who is wildly generous in my time, skills, and encouragement. you see, it’s not just about us. it’s never been about us. life has been and will always be about people. we can say all day long that we love people, that we want to serve people, and that we want to help people — but if our actions don’t match 100% of the time, then our words are useless. if we only help people when we have time, if we only are intentional with people when we feel like it, and only recognize people when it’s convenient for us— then we miss the whole point. our actions have the power to make people feel like a nobody or a somebody. so, here is the question. and i want you to be brutally honest with yourself, i’ll do the same. are your actions making people feel like a somebody or a nobody? stop long enough to think. stop long enough to answer truthfully. because, what our generation needs is people who slow down for the “pause”. people who slow down and take the time to make people feel known and seen. when people feel known, they’ll feel important. when they feel important, they’ll rise up and live to their fullest potential. it’s a domino effect in every sense of the meaning. do you see where this is going? when people rise to their full potential, they’ll live out their dreams, encourage others to do the same. and then… yes, then, we’ll see the world moving and spinning in the way it was created to. you may be one person… but your actions matter. so let’s throw out the trendy hashtags and verbiage of authentic living and community and start living it. action > words.
