You Show Up For More People Than You Know

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Happy Sunday & thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter!

Did you realize that you didn’t receive my newsletter this morning? Maybe so, maybe not - but I decided that I’d send this week’s newsletter at 9:00 PM instead, just to run a little thought experiment.

Even if you’re a routine reader of my newsletter like quite a few of you have told me you are, you probably still didn’t notice that you didn’t receive the newsletter at 9:00 AM today. Maybe you thought it went to spam, or you just didn’t get it, but I’m curious whether you felt like it was missing from your routine.

In any case, the point of the thought experiment is simple: there are things in our life that we take for granted — often times things that are done by other people — and we only recognize that they’re a part of our own routine when they’re gone or not there anymore.

Building Routine in a Community

There are personal routines in our lives that are fully dependent on ourselves, such as waking up in the morning and brushing your teeth or making yourself a cup of coffee in the mornings.

But then, there are also those routines that depend on other people.

Maybe it’s going to the same breakfast sandwich stand on the side of the street for a croissant every morning and saying hello to the chef who knows your name and order by heart (this was my own routine when I worked in Manhattan), or maybe it’s having the garbage in your office taken out by the same lady every morning at the same time.

It could even be as simple as saying “good morning” to the same co-workers everyday, or even just driving past someone who you never speak to but they’re always there on your way to work.

There’s things we get used to happening around us that are being done by the people around us. There’s a routine that we get used to subconsciously, because of the community in which we live.

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Appreciating the community routine

As I mentioned in my opening paragraph, however, you probably don’t notice the roles that other people play in your own life’s routine until they’re gone. You don’t fully recognize how important a person is in your life — whether or not you even interact with them — until there’s some absence of that person for whatever reason (maybe they’re on vacation or moved somewhere else).

So in the same way that maybe you didn’t recognize that my newsletter is a part of your routine until it’s not in your inbox at 9:00 AM on a Sunday, there’s other things in your life that are curated by people who put them there unbeknownst to you too.

Think about how you go about your day, and I bet you can find at least one person that makes up a part of your routine.

When you think about this person, if it’s someone you interact with, the next time you see them during your routine, acknowledge (whether to yourself or outwardly to them) that you appreciate their role in your life’s routine. The intertwining of our daily lives and daily routines in community is something that I think is incredibly powerful in social connections for humans.

Acknowledging it makes you appreciate that there’s some beauty in the way your routine is intertwined with someone else’s.

You’re Part of Someone Else’s Routine, Too

We spend so much time trying to optimize our own routines that we forget — we are the routine for someone else. You might be the person someone sees every day on their commute. You might be the first reply someone gets on their weekly post. You might be the person who always holds the door, always nods hello, always remembers their name.

And they notice.

Even if you never hear it, even if they never say anything, your presence offers predictability in a world that often feels chaotic. You become a fixed point in someone else’s orbit. A sign that things are moving the way they’re supposed to. That there’s order. That someone is showing up — even if it’s just by standing in line at the same time, in the same place, with the same expression.

And the truth is: you don’t need to do anything dramatic to matter. You just have to be there.

That’s what community often looks like.
Not grand gestures — just consistent ones.

The Beauty of Unspoken Community

There’s something beautiful about the quiet, unspoken rhythm that develops between people who simply show up in the same spaces, day after day. These aren’t necessarily your close friends. You may not even know their names. But their presence becomes part of the background music of your life.

It’s the guy who runs past you every morning on your jog — the one who gives a half-nod but never says anything. It’s the woman who walks her dog past your building like clockwork. The couple who always arrives 10 minutes late to the workout class.

You don’t know them. But you do.

And when they’re not there, it feels like something is slightly off. Like the timing of the world is just a little bit out of sync. That’s the power of quiet community. Of social connection without conversation. Of sharing space and time, and unknowingly anchoring one another.

It’s easy to take that for granted — until it’s disrupted.

Conclusion

The routines that connect us — the ones built silently, over time, by people simply showing up — are one of the most underrated forms of human connection. They don’t ask for attention. They don’t require deep conversation. But they create rhythm, safety, and structure in a world that can feel anything but.

And the wild part is: we’re all building that for someone else, just by being who we are, where we are, with some regularity and care.

So if you take anything from this week’s letter, let it be this:
Even your smallest patterns matter.
Even your unnoticed consistency might be holding something up for someone else.
And that’s not a burden — it’s a quiet kind of privilege.

We don’t always know the roles we play in other people’s lives.
But we’re playing them, every day.

Acknowledge other’s roles in your life where you can, and know that you matter to the fine fabric holding up this world too.

Until next Sunday,
Justin