Impression
15 September 2026
Listen to my narration of this piece (5 min)
Sometimes it is the more innocuous figures that end up casting the longest shadows in our life.
I was talking to someone the other day who was telling me about their friend’s friend’s Dad, who was a mudlarker. A mudlarker is someone who scours the banks of the Thames at low tide looking for historical items. They had got chatting to him at the friend’s party, and he had ended up telling them all about mudlarking, and how he had started, and all the exciting things he had found. This ended up having a huge effect. Not least shown by the fact they found it appropriate to tell me about it, many years later!
And when I think about the engagements I’ve had throughout my life, there are some which seem to play a part so large that it is unclear in its reason. When I use the word engagements, I deliberately avoid using ‘interaction’ or ‘conversation’ or ‘discussion’. The specific type of human-human communication I want to specify is one that can only reasonably be described as engagement. Two humans engaging with each other. The point here is that it can be a huge, great long discussion, or a couple of words shared, or sometimes even wordless. A look of confusion followed by a laugh at the same unusual occurrence is enough. Not simply a transaction of information, by engagement I mean that - fleetingly or otherwise - the world of one and the world of another are conjoined and spin together.
A brief word, before I go on, about the tragedy that the word engagement has been co-opted by social media. Indeed, social media - and digitisation at large - have co-opted many words and twisted their meaning. There is tweeting, for example, which now instills a sense of aggressive shouting matches through computer screens instead of sweet, mystical, birdsong. Similarly, the word engagement has taken a cynical meaning. It is the ultra-measurable likes, dislikes, comments, and reposts. Hopefully the reader can suspend this evocation for the purposes of this short piece, and maybe even delay the return of the more cynical modern version.
Anyway, in these engagements with people both parties are left changed. There is a - however small - impression of one left on the other. In this way, over the years and decades, we become crater-filled. Some people are affected greatly by their engagements, others very little. Some wear their engagements proudly with a sense of celebration, others hide them. There is an elephant in the room here, which is that these marks can often be very raw and traumatic reminders of past tragedy or danger. They can have profoundly damaging effects. How one wears their indentations and impressions is a totally individual choice. There is certainly no right answer. Part of the beauty of meeting someone new is figuring out the - hopefully mostly positive and invigorating, but sadly not always - chalk marks left on them by others, and guessing the chalk marks that will be left on you after this engagement with them.
The impressions need not be limited to direct contact, either. There is a beautiful butterfly effect, that the impressions of one on another can be observed and attended to by a third. Because these impressions are often difficult to exactly identify - let alone classify and understand - these chains can reach unknown lengths. Who knows who I am indirectly communicating with through a discussion with a friend.
So all the people with whom you have shared an engagement are left slightly different after. And you, in turn, are slightly different, too. This observation will not change the world, but it is another lens with which to aim appreciation at life’s abundant detail.