In July 2014 I came across “The Optimist’s Creed” on Facebook and one of the items on the list is to: make all friends feel there’s something worthwhile in them. There are gobs of inspirational and motivational quotes floating around on social media; we like them, we love them, and sometimes we share them with our own friends. But (and this is what I pondered next) what good is just reading these quotes, liking and/or sharing them, and then continuing to scroll really doing for me? How is simply reading these things changing me as a person or any of the people who are a part of my world? So, I decided to start my own personal Facebook project where I would randomly let each of my friends know how and why they are worthwhile to me. At the time I had 259 Facebook friends (I keep a tight ship and don’t let just anyone into my personal world), and the idea was to pick a new person every day and write a post, tagging them, and sharing special words or a fond memory. If I were to keep up with this every day, I would be completely done with this project in less than a year; sounded perfectly doable. I went to my friends list on my computer and I took screenshots of my friends list, scrolling down until I captured them all. I printed the screenshots out and would mark off the people as I went to keep track of who I had posted about and who I had not. It was a huge hit! It was heart-warming to write these posts and it touched the heart of the recipient as well, sometimes even making them cry… good tears, of course. After doing this for a few weeks many people started really paying attention and would anticipate when their time would come to receive their very own post from me. I was very diligent about posting every day for several months but then I noticed the posts were starting to get a little harder to write as I was getting to the people on my friends list that I actually didn’t really know. I’d say the project got to be about 90% complete… and my friend list grew a little shorter.
I challenge you, if you use any type of social media, to think about doing this project, or something similar. It is very rewarding, and wouldn’t it be awesome if enough people started using social media to light up one another?
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