our names are the sweetest sound we will ever hear

​Yesterday, my friend Hannah posted an image of a text from her teenage daughter. The text said, "the bus driver remembered my name."

In her post, Hannah said, "In case you’re wondering teachers, bus drivers, staff, it matters… even to the big kids ❤️.

I wrote yesterday about how in the earliest days of our lives our brains get wired to need acceptance. Acceptance makes us feel safe. Do you know what the very first word we often hear is, the word we hear most when our brains are most actively wiring together the sights and sounds that make us feel safe?

Our name.

More than anything else in the earliest moments of my life, the thing that made me feel safest was the word Keith. Because the people who were coming into my life saying Keith were the same people coming into my life to confirm that I was accepted and safe.

That is why my friend Hannah is right. Remembering someone's name - using it to address them - it matters. It matters to the big kids. And I promise you, it even matters to the very old kids like me.

There's something that happens when someone greets me in person or sends me a message and adresses me by my name.

It's a feeling. It's safe.

My guess is that feeling is tied to a memory in my brain that goes all the way back to the cradle, where people saying my name was the safest way I had at the time of identifying my people.

Hannah's daughter yesterday - when the bus driver called her by her name - she felt like the bus driver was saying 'you are my people.'

You are my people comes with a feeling of acceptance. When it comes from someone you assumed had forgotten your name, it can also make you feel special.

Relationships and acceptance are challenging. But there are some things we can do that are quite simple. Simple, yet when you are on the receiving end of them, they are something to write home to mom about.

Simple like calling someone by their name.

Today, if you want to make someone feel accepted, call them by their name. And if you want to go a step further and make someone feel special, call someone by their name who assumes you have no idea what it is.

Because I think Carnegie is right, "names are the sweetest and most important sound in any language."