A couple of days ago, I did something small but strangely significant: I texted an old friend. We hadn’t spoken in a while. Things between us had gone off track, not because we stopped being friends, but because life threw us into a disagreement we couldn’t quite navigate. Still, I remembered her. And for me, remembering someone feels more honest than holding a grudge. So I tapped out a simple message and hit “send.”
She replied. Short, but polite. I answered back. And then… nothing. Just the little “seen” mark, staring back at me like a blinking neon sign. Left on read.
But here’s the twist: I’m not bitter about it.
A few years ago, that would’ve wrecked me. I would’ve obsessed over every word in my text. I would’ve wondered if I sounded too casual or too eager. I would’ve checked my phone ten times an hour, hoping for a ping. I would’ve replayed the last moments of our friendship like a courtroom case file, trying to prove whether I was guilty of something. Back then, a “seen” mark would have felt like a closed door slammed in my face.
But now that I’ve learned a lot, I’ve let it go. And it wasn’t because I didn’t care. I reached out because I did care. I finally understood what Ryan Holiday teaches in The Daily Stoic through Epictetus: some things we can control, and others we cannot. My part ended when I hit send. What happens next, whether she replies, ignores it, or writes a long response, is not my responsibility. Honestly, it feels good to realize that.
Massimo Pigliucci in How to Be a Stoic discusses the importance of living with integrity by choosing actions that reflect our own values rather than others’ opinions. That clicked for me, completely, because if I had chosen to stay silent out of pride, it wouldn’t have been true to myself. I value connection over ego. I value honesty over playing games. By reaching out, I was already living in line with my values. Whether she responded or not didn’t change the integrity of my action.
This is where many of us go wrong. We mix up getting a response with being validated. If the other person replies, we believe our effort was important. If they don’t, we think it was pointless. But the reality is, the worth of what we do isn’t about the response we get. It’s about whether it shows who we really are.
Everywhere we go, we see this lesson. We pitch an idea at work, and no one replies. We post something online, and it fails to gain traction. We apologize, yet the other person doesn’t forgive us. It little bit hurt, but silence doesn’t erase the integrity of our action. Marcus Aurelius nailed it in Meditations: “You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this, and you will find strength.”
It also reminded me of Eat Pray Love. Elizabeth Gilbert learns that not every relationship is meant to be repaired, and not every silence is a loss. Sometimes people are simply stuck in their own season of healing. We can remember them, miss them, even wish them well, but their journey isn’t ours to carry. My friend might be in that place. She might be holding onto something I can’t see, or maybe she’s simply not ready. I can’t know, and I don’t have to. I just know I opened the door.
And leaving the door open doesn’t mean standing at it, waiting. It doesn’t mean checking our phone every five minutes or drafting clever follow-up texts. It means we made the gesture, set the table, lit the candle, and now we carry on with our lives. If she ever decides to walk through, the invitation is there. But my peace isn’t tied to her choice. My peace is tied to the fact that I acted with honesty and integrity. That’s the part I can control. That’s the part that matters.
There’s a strange freedom in realizing we don’t need someone else’s reply to validate our decision. It untangles us from resentment, frees us from overthinking, and lets us walk lighter. It gives us space for the people who do show up easily, the work that excites us, and the clarity to know who we want to be.
So yes, I was left on read. But no, I’m not stuck there. Because peace begins the moment we stop chasing someone else’s response and start honoring our own values.
Love,
Kirana
