My Second Letter To You
Dear Reader,
Who are you? What do you identify as? Do you like boys? Do you like girls? Do you like both? If you don’t, are you aromantic or asexual? Do you prefer hotdogs or hamburgers? Do you eat meat at all? Do you like pizza? If so, what’s your opinion on pineapple on pizza? Do you have a pet? Do you like the rain?
I do not know any of this. You may or may not have answered those questions in your head but that doesn’t really matter to me. Because while you’re reading my posts, you are anonymous. You don’t have any specific pronouns because I’m either calling you “reader” or “you.” You don’t have any specific physical features because I don’t know you.
I don’t know you, but I love you. I get lonely sometimes. I think everyone gets lonely at some point. But I get lonely sometimes, and you, my wonderful Reader, you’re the one who helps me get through it. I have talked about and I probably will continue to talk about how I’m a supporting character. I don’t know if I’ll always be a supporting character, but I like being a supporting character most of the time. Everyone has thoughts and they can always hear themselves. It almost makes you feel like the main character, right? You can only hear yourself and you have no idea what’s actually going through everyone else’s heads 24/7. You’re the main character in your own story, but I want to talk to you about being a supporting character in someone else’s.
You’ve probably been told that you should be nice to people because “what if your roles were reversed” or “you may never know what happens later,” but I want to talk to you about the second one.
You have an impact on others. I talked about this earlier so you can just go read that, but I’m reiterating. You have an impact on others. I challenge you now to say this to yourself five times a day. It doesn’t matter if you shout it or whisper it but I want you to say a sentence to yourself. You can write it too if you want to do that instead. But I want you to say (or write) the sentence “I have an impact on the world because I have an impact on other people.”
Do it now.
Did you do it just now? If you did, and I really hope you did, it probably felt silly. It’s just a simple sentence, right? But you need to memorize that sentence and say it or write it each day until you have it stuck in your head, and then I want you to keep saying or writing it. I want you to do this because the sentence I want you to either say or write? It’s true. It’s more true than the fact that I have never owned a tiger before (though I think that would be a super cool thing to do even if it was dangerous and a lot of work). Anyways, The Sentence is true and factual and correct and right and all those other synonyms for true.
The Sentence, and I do want you to call it The Sentence (with the capital letters) because it is important, is a thing that helps me. And there’s a chance that you, my amazing Reader, just thought “well, I don’t need help,” but there’s a bigger chance that you didn’t so I’ll keep going. The Sentence helps me. It helps me when I’m alone at home and a bit sad because it’s night and I don’t want to call one of my friends at 11pm just so we can talk, and The Sentence also helps me when I’m at a party or talking with people who I don’t really want to talk to but I have to be polite.
As humans, we need to feel important. I haven’t done a ton of research on this but other people have so you should trust me on this. As a human, my marvelous Reader, you need to feel like you’re important. And it might be that you keep reading my posts so you can tell yourself that at least one person loves me unconditionally and thinks I’m important. That might also not happen because you may have an astonishing amount of self confidence (I do not have this but I applaud you if you do). Either way, you need to feel important (even with a lot of self confidence). You need to feel important not because you’re weak or unimportant, but because it’s a natural need. You need to feel like there’s something tying you to this world or you will not do well. This is a fact. So, do me a favor and say/write The Sentence five times a day. Do this and make sure you can assure yourself that YES you ARE important to this world.
Switching back to the original topic, I’m going to talk more about being a supporting character. I’ve talked about how you’re the main character in your own story and that you are important, but you might be asking how you could go beyond that. So here’s how to make a slightly bigger difference. The key word in supporting character is supporting. You have to support. I do not mean do everything for a person and I would never tell you that one person is more important than another (I believe that all lives matter and everyone deserves to live), but there’s a person out there who might have a big impact on the world someday. This person is weird because I don’t know who they are and you don’t either, but you’ll have to treat everyone like they might be this person because you never know if they will be. If you’re nice to this person or if you give them some good life advice, you could change their life.
I don’t mean that you could completely change them (although it may be possible), but you can change something for them. We humans usually feel sympathetic and all that stuff. So if you’re nice to someone, who may or may not be the person who might change the world, you could make them feel a bit better and maybe they’ll be a little brighter and they’ll help the other people they come into contact with. They’ll talk about it in schools like it’s some kind of boomerang. The teachers and counselors will tell kids and teens that kindness will come back to you. But I want to tell you that it might not. You may not receive the kindness in return from an alternate source. Though someone else might. If you hold the door for someone or do something nice for them, they might be a bit kinder to someone else who might really need it. One caring action can change a person’s outlook on the whole day. And if you’re nice, maybe your actions will somehow impact someone else in a good way. So this is just one of the ways you can impact things and I’ll probably talk about it more later (and remember that this isn’t the only way to impact the world), but I have to go now so I’ll wrap it up. Be a supporting character and you won’t get a lot of recognition but maybe you’ll help someone and that is something that should be celebrated.
This seems a bit longer than the other posts I’ve seen on tumblr but I don’t care because I’m trying to reach you and this is the best way I can. So I will continue to ramble and update and post and whatnot as much as I can. This may not be everyday but I do have a lot of thoughts on this so I promise I’ll be back.
I love you very much and I love the person that you are for reading this, even if you completely ignore it later. You, my Reader, are so many good things and I’ll keep trying to tell you this by calling you marvelous or fantastic or amazing, but I hope you remember that you’re important.
Thank you for reading,
A Supporting Character