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March 16, 2008- Your Response, Or Lack There-of, To a Personal Email or Invite Says A Lot About How Much You Really Care We get a lot of emails and invites these days. Add to that social networking accounts to keep track of such as Facebook and you sure have a lot of social cyber-interaction to keep track of. That said, when you receive a personal email or invite is it not common courtesy to respond? Your response, or lack there-of, I think says a lot about how much you care about that person. There have been a fair amount of personal emails and invites I've sent to people without nary a response. Yeah I know we're all "busy", but geez that tells me that I'm just not important enough for you to write a simple response; and that hurts a little. I know you got the email, invite, or Facebook message, so there's really no hiding the fact that you couldn't find the time to give me at least the common courtesy of a response. Yeah I know some of the invites we receive we could care less about (and I'm not talking about blanket invites like Evite, etc. - they are very impersonal, though they have their purpose), but if you receive a personal one, no matter how disinterested you are in the particular subject matter, couldn't you at least muster a "Hey thanks for the invite - I won't be able to make it." At least you're acknowledging the person exists. 
Yes, I know sometimes there's a bit of a gray area though. For example, you can receive many, if not hundreds, of birthday wishes on Facebook on your day - but is it really that hard to take 10 or 15 minutes thanking each of those people for their birthday wishes? They took the time out of their day to specially acknowledge your worth. The Facebook birthday issue is a minor one sure, and I wouldn't really hold it against someone for not responding as much as I would a personal email or invite, but still. Someone that does respond with a thank you means a lot. (Let me also distinguish between a personal email and invite and all the random crap people invite you to join and what have you on Facebook. I'm talking about something that elicits a direct connection to you and the person sending the email, etc....something you'd actually say to each other if you ran into each other on the street) Now I know I'm not batting 1.000 with responding to people's personal emails and invites to myself, but I do really try to respond, even if briefly. Even if I'm not close to the person I feel as if they deserve the respect and courtesy of a response from me. If I do drop the ball on a response, I truly do feel bad, so I apologize to anyone reading this that remembers such a time. I guess I just want to encourage you to consider what your response, or lack there-of, says to the person that took the time out of their day to write you a personal note or personally invite you to something. Again I know we're all "busy" but try to make an effort to respond to someone when they write you. Like I said, it doesn't have to be a big deal most of the time. But at least write something in response. Acknowledge that yeah you got the message and that that person is important enough to you to merit a response of some sort. If I can give any tips regarding this I'd say respond right away. If I don't make the effort to respond right away, I find my propensity to respond lessens with each passing day. It doesn't dwindle completely, but it gets harder to remember and to have the motivation to do so. I got an email from a friend the other day. I had sent them an email months ago, and they just got around to responding to me. Sure it was really, really late, but I did very much appreciate the fact they didn't forget and made the effort to let me know eventually. I didn't even care about the subject matter anymore, but I did care that they took the effort to show me indirectly that I matter. Sometimes I don't get responses from the people that I think are "closest" to me. That's when it really hurts. You may think I'm overreacting, but don't our responses or lack there-of tell us how much we really care about someone? Shouldn't the people we claim to care about merit a response? Shouldn't anyone that sends us a personal email or personal invite merit a response? It takes only a minute. |
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