Ever have that moment when you took all the courage that you have, even practice the message, read it a couple of times to make sure you don’t sound rude before sending a message to someone(e.g. Your teacher, your friend, sibling, or your boss) and the moment that it’s already sent, it took them quite some time before they would read it? Watching those three dots indicating they were typing a reply gives you excitement and then, voila! You got yourself a big blue thumbs up. Then, you would feel rather anxious or upset. You know what? Having that person read your message is already a privilege. 

Our teachers received hundreds of messages from students every single day, and so does your boss, or any other person, maybe less than a hundred but the fact that people are striving every day, trying to get their work done while dealing with their own issues, they have stuff and errands to catch up, don’t expect them to also send you an essay-like message. If ever your teacher, your boss, your friend, parent, coworker, friend sibling, or distant relative seen-zoned you, it’s fine, it’s totally fine because there are people in their inboxes trying to reach them but weren’t lucky enough to have their message read.

The next time you would feel upset if someone seen-zoned or like-zoned you, maybe your message doesn’t really need to have a response, or maybe their thumbs-up emoji says it all, already. People aren’t rude just because they left you on read–people are just busy, maybe. If your message was read, tell yourself, “I’m a lucky person because even if this friend of mine is busy, she took a minute of her long hectic day to read my message.”