Not Popular Enough

I sat next to a woman at a memorial service, as we were both there to remember a mutual friend, a good man, who was too soon gone.

Memorials are odd gatherings—half solemn, half reunion. You hug people you haven’t seen in years, and you tell each other you’ll keep in touch, though you won’t.

You also end up noticing little things about the crowd you wouldn’t think to anywhere else. This particular woman noticed something right off: the number of people I greeted.

She said, “You seem to know everybody.”

I chuckled because I knew where this was going. The woman had recognized a few familiar faces in the crowd—local radio folks, those who spend their bantering on-air about traffic jams, weather forecasts, and which celebrity is currently embarrassing themselves.

She watched me say hello to them, smile, offer a handshake, and then get brushed off like lint on a jacket. Not rudely, but with that polite disregard that feels like you’re part of the “unimportant” pile.

Finally, she leaned over and asked, “Why are they like that?”

Now, you could write a whole doctoral thesis on why people in the media act the way they do, but I didn’t want to turn the memorial service into a Sociology 101 course. So I gave her the best answer I had, “I don’t play the popularity games they do.”

That’s all I said, and she nodded like I’d just handed her the missing piece of a puzzle.

Popularity is a funny kind of currency. It buys you attention but spends quickly. It’s also exhausting.

You’ve got to constantly polish it, like silverware you’ll never actually use. And the folks who live in that world know the game is fickle—they’re only as “somebody” as their ratings or their retweets.

Now, I don’t fault them for it. We all find our ways to matter to others.

Some earn it through applause, while others do so through acts of kindness. Some try to earn awards, while others stack up memories, but one way or another, we’re all out here trying to be noticed before our ride is over.

Still, I gave up on popularity a long time ago. When I was younger, I thought it mattered—thought if I got invited to the right parties or knew the right people, life would somehow roll out smoother, like a freshly paved road.

It turns out that it’s more like walking a balance beam over a pit of alligators. Miss a step, and suddenly the crowd you thought adored you is leaning over the rail, waiting for the splash.

The woman sitting next to me laughed when I explained it that way. “So you’d rather not play?” she asked.

“Exactly,” I said. “I’m not even sure there’s a prize.”

And the truth is, once you stop caring about who’s keeping score, life gets a whole lot lighter. You start noticing things—like how comforting it is to sit quietly next to someone who gets it, or how the smell of coffee in the church hall kitchen can cut through the heaviness of loss like a friendly wink.

At the end of the service, those same radio people who barely glanced at me went right back into their bubble, catching up with each other, laughing loud enough to make sure everyone heard. That was fine by me.

I wasn’t there for them. I was there to remember a friend, shake a few honest hands, and carry home a story worth telling.

On the way out, the woman turned to me and said, “You know, not playing their game—that might be the most popular move you can make.”

We both laughed, because the joke landed where it should–in the sweet spot where humor meets truth.

And maybe that is the prize. Not applause, not recognition, but walking away with your peace intact and your dignity unscratched.

Because in the end, no one remembers who was most popular at a memorial. People only remember who showed up and who sat beside the hurting when the silence feels too heavy to hold alone.