Send It to the Five

A man runs into a friend he has not seen in years. His wife films the hug. Within the hour it is on his WhatsApp status.

I have these moments often: a doorway, a friend, a family I have not seen in years. When I see a status like his, my honest first reaction is a question. Why would you send this to everyone you know? To me the moment belongs to the two of us. If I share it at all, it goes to a very few people, the ones I actually want to hand some of my joy to.

But I do understand the urge, because of my uncle.

He is my father’s younger brother, and he is the storyteller in our family. At every reunion he tells his stories. He does not check whether anyone is listening. He does not care whether we liked the last one. He is not performing. He just wants to pass them on to us. Many times he tells one he has told before. I cannot speak for the whole family, but I like it every time.

So I do not think the man with the phone is showing off. He is doing what my uncle does. Something good happened to him, and he wants it to reach someone. That urge is old, and it is good. The only question is who it reaches.

My uncle’s stories reach his family. We know him, and that is why a story we have already heard still works. The man’s video reaches four hundred contacts: colleagues, old classmates, people who have never met the friend and do not know what the friendship means. They cannot give him what a family gives. They can give him a count: eighty-four reactions by evening. And once there is a count, he will watch it. My uncle has never counted anything.

Sending it to everyone also reaches people the moment was never meant for. This is the one I think about. I travel to a city where several of my friends live. I have one free evening, so I see one family, and it is a lovely evening. If I post it, the others learn from a status that I was in town and did not call. Nothing about that evening was unkind. The broadcast is what would make it so. So I do not post, and the evening stays what it was.

So this is how I think about it. Joy is worth passing on; my uncle is right about that. But it only lands with people who know what it means to you.

The man in the video did not want an audience. He wanted his friend back for one more minute, and he wanted the few people who know what that friendship means to him to feel some of it too. Those people have names. If the honest count is five, send it to the five.