Whether he enjoys sending it

A man in Salmiya makes handmade gift boxes for weddings and new babies. Every Thursday he sends his latest designs to every number saved in his phone. Old classmates. The plumber. A man who once sold him a car.

He does not like doing it. He tells himself so each week, just before he presses send. But the other sellers are louder than he is, and if he goes quiet, he says, nobody will know he exists.

Almost everyone who sends unwanted messages feels this way. Reluctant, a little embarrassed, and certain there is no alternative.

Look at the people who went this way first. The sellers whose messages most of us muted years ago are not, for the most part, thriving. Many of them are not around at all. The route that seemed unavoidable did not lead anywhere good, and they did not enjoy the trip.

The reason it feels unavoidable is that it pays a little, quickly. One order from a hundred messages looks like proof. What it does not show is the ninety-nine people who now open his name with a small sigh, or not at all.

There is another way, and it is plain. Find the forty families who already bought from him and liked what arrived. Treat their attention as something borrowed. Make something good enough that they want to show it to their sisters and their neighbours. Then the boxes travel because his customers have a reason to pass them on, not because he pushed.

His reluctance changes nothing for the plumber. The message lands the same whether he enjoyed sending it or hated every minute.

If he would not want to receive it, he should not send it.