I’ve received many messages that I’ll never read.
The number next to the mail app on my phone reads 35,342.
The number next to the messages app reads 623.
Mostly spam? Note sure.
Hidden gems? Unlikely.
But sometimes I wonder what’s in there, and if I could ever read them all. Sometimes I wonder if I’ve missed something wonderful, and if it’s hiding in the wrong place; affixed with the wrong label.
I wonder what the messages with an unsubscribe link might tell me about who I once was, or how the messages in spam might reveal who’s sold my information for profit. I wonder, but I don’t read.
I wonder if there’s an essay to write should I eventually read them all, or an entire book. There’s certainly a blog post in not reading them (hello). Perhaps there’s an essay or a book there, too.
I’m a little worried to look in case there’s nothing there. I’m even more worried when I consider that there could in fact be something—especially something lost; long-since expired.
I love these strange artifacts of modern life. I suspect that people did not used to have 35,342 handwritten letters piled up by their door, all unread. We have so much noise now, so little signal.
The unread is both mystery and mundanity.