Just A Thought:

Joyful Language-Learning + Symphonic Sentences 

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There’s an essay I read a while back by Sasha Chapin about what might be the key to

the universe (or at least some parts of it): responsiveness.

He says charisma is basically just responsiveness, i.e. picking up what others are putting down. 

We all want to be liked. And, Chapin argues, we all know how to be liked — it’s just hard, and we don’t always want to put the effort in. “It takes attention and openness,” he writes, “and the confidence to present your character like it’s a fun mask you’re wearing rather than a lesson you’re desperate to teach someone.”

Anyway: Responsiveness. We’ve all felt it — in conversations or even in writing.

Chapin’s example of an email that feels responsive? Derek Sivers, the founder of CD

Baby (an early music distributor) chalks up most of his success to a single email, the one

you’d get when you bought a CD. I adore this email:

Your CD has been gently taken from our CD Baby shelves with sterilized

contamination-free gloves and placed onto a satin pillow.

A team of 50 employees inspected your CD and polished it to make sure it was in

the best possible condition before mailing.

Our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and a hush fell over the crowd as he

put your CD into the finest gold-lined box that money can buy.

We all had a wonderful celebration afterwards and the whole party marched down

the street to the post office where the entire town of Portland waved “Bon Voyage!”

to your package, on its way to you, in our private CD Baby jet on this day, Friday,

June 6th.

I hope you had a wonderful time shopping at CD Baby. We sure did. Your picture is

on our wall as “Customer of the Year.” We’re all exhausted but can’t wait for you to

come back to CDBABY.COM!!

It’s just an email, but, like… it’s charming. You can sense a responsive human behind the

words. Someone was thinking about this. Someone wanted to give you something that

would make you smile. Someone actually cared. Surprisingly rare!

Once you realise how much humans love responsiveness, you can’t unsee it.