Last week, I wrote a Patreon post called “The One Star.” Apparently, the universe wasn’t finished with me yet, because this week I discovered The Three Stars. And before you start thinking I’ve become completely obsessed with my ratings, let me explain.
A friend of mine came over to my house today. We were talking, laughing, looking at some changes I’d made around the house, and somehow the conversation turned to Substack. She is one of my closest friends. She is also not what anyone would describe as technologically adventurous. I’ve been helping her learn AI recently, and sometimes watching her navigate technology is an adventure in itself.
So I said to her, “You know, you gave me three stars on Substack.”
She looked at me. “I did?”
“Yes. You gave me three stars.”
She had absolutely no idea, and I believed her. She hadn’t read something I wrote, thoughtfully considered its literary merits, weighed the strengths and weaknesses of my argument and concluded, Ming Chee. Three stars. Adequate. Could be better. She had apparently clicked something without understanding what she was doing.
I started laughing, but then I said something to her that stayed with me after the conversation was over: You may not know what you did, but there can still be repercussions to your actions.
Suddenly I realized that my three stars had given me a companion lesson to last week’s one star.
How often do we do this in life? We say something casually. We don’t return a call. We forget to say thank you. We click a button. We make a face. We walk away from a conversation. We fail to acknowledge someone’s effort. We do something that feels insignificant to us because we know what we intended. But the person on the receiving end doesn’t experience our intention. They experience our action.
She knew she hadn’t consciously decided that my writing deserved three stars. But I couldn’t see what was happening inside her head when I saw those stars. I could only see three stars.
And that is where this week’s lesson became more interesting than I expected, because there are actually two sides to this. Yes, we need to become more conscious of the effect our actions have on other people. But we also need to be careful about the stories we create about other people’s actions.
That’s a harder one.
Someone doesn’t respond to your text, and suddenly your mind starts filling in the blanks. They’re upset with me. They don’t care. I shouldn’t have said that. Maybe I did something wrong. Someone walks past you without saying hello and you think, Well, that was rude. Someone doesn’t acknowledge something you did for them and you decide, They don’t appreciate me. Someone gives you three stars and you conclude, They didn’t like what I wrote.
Maybe.
But maybe not.
Maybe they were distracted. Maybe they were overwhelmed. Maybe they misunderstood. Maybe they hit the wrong button. Maybe they didn’t even know there was a button.
And apparently, sometimes they are my best friend.
This doesn’t mean we should explain away every hurtful thing someone does. Last week’s One Star still taught me something important. There are times when an action fits into a larger pattern, and we need to pay attention to that pattern. Sometimes the little thing isn’t really little at all. It simply illuminates something we’ve been unwilling to see.
But this week’s Three Stars taught me something different: Not every action carries the meaning we assign to it.
I think both lessons can be true at the same time. We are responsible for becoming more conscious of what we put into the world, and we are also responsible for becoming more conscious of the meaning we assign to what comes back to us.
That space between intention and impact is where a tremendous amount of human misunderstanding lives.
“I didn’t mean it that way.”
“But that’s how it felt.”
Both statements can be true. That doesn’t necessarily make either person wrong. It may simply mean there is information missing between them. And perhaps kindness is what helps us become curious about that missing information before we rush to judgment.
Kindness toward the other person says, Maybe I don’t know the whole story.
Kindness toward ourselves says, What I felt was real, even if what I assumed wasn’t.
I think that distinction matters. We don’t have to invalidate our feelings simply because we later discover that our interpretation was wrong. The three stars were real. My interpretation of those three stars was understandable. Her complete bewilderment when I told her she’d given them to me was also real. All three things can coexist.
Maybe this is another form of what I call Spiritual Currency.
Every day, we exchange things with one another that have nothing to do with money: attention, gratitude, patience, words, silence, encouragement, dismissal, kindness, a smile, even a tiny tap on a screen. We put these things into circulation constantly, often without realizing we’re doing it, and they have value. Sometimes enormous value.
A kind word that costs us nothing can stay with another person for years. A careless remark that took three seconds to say can do the same.
That doesn’t mean we need to become terrified of every word, gesture or click. It simply means we can become a little more awake. Before we send something out into the world, perhaps we can ask ourselves, What am I putting into circulation? And when something comes back to us, perhaps we can ask, Do I actually know what this means, or am I filling in the blanks?
There is wisdom on both sides of that exchange.
So apparently, after all these years of writing, coaching, and talking about energy, intention, kindness and Spiritual Currency, I am now being taught by a rating system.
Last week, One Star.
This week, Three Stars.
I don’t know what next week holds, but at this rate I should probably prepare myself for a deeply transformative encounter with Four Stars.
And if I ever finally reach Five Stars, apparently I will have achieved enlightenment.
Or my friends will have finally figured out how Substack works.
At this point, either one seems equally miraculous.
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