Skimming Takes The Cream

by Pat Antonopoulos

Email is convenient, quick and inexpensive. Users can dash in and dash out, choosing both time spent and length of message. Doing business on email allows easy access to information and almost instant response time. Some users type all lower case letters and forgo punctuation so the process is even faster. We have all learned to skim through our emails, noting what requires an action and what is quickly deleted. There are spam deterrents to save more time, to trim the waste. Even the 'friendly letter' email often gets the skim. And so we loose the richness, the cream.

A friend may write with a true need to communicate, to share at this moment. But that need might be buried in the email and easily missed as we skim for 'just the important stuff'. The cream of the friendship is watered down to the barest communication.

Recently, I received an email from a long time friend, someone from high school days. Much of the email was the catching-up kind of communication, like long ago chatting over coffee. Tucked in the middle was a message that I missed because I was in skim mode and hurried though the text. Later, as I worked to delete old messages, I decided to reread his email.

There are 'thud' moments and there are moments of feeling a weight on the chest...a weight of failure. This was one of the heaviest kind of thuds. My friend was asking for a part of our old friendship, a dollop of cream to soothe a need. And I missed it.

My follow-up email apologized. I truly meant the apology and did my best to give the support that was needed, but I knew my message was diluted by carelessness---by too much hurry and too little caring.

Preserving the cream of family and friend communication has to be worth the few extra minutes it takes to read with interest and concern, taking care to hold a hand that is stretching towards us.