The Content Management Institute routinely puts on great events, and loads of ‘em are my favorite price: Free Ninety-Nine.

Just before Thanksgiving, I was able to drop in on their two-day Masters of Marketing: Visual Storytelling webinar. And I was stoked, y’all — Catch + Release luminaries Analisa Goodin and Thomas Christmann were leading off the first day.

I took a lot of notes. Like…a lot. I won’t repeat the whole thing here (you can still register and view it on demand here) but one thing gave me goosebumps.

As human beings, we’ve been engaging in visual storytelling since the very beginning of humanity. Considering cave paintings and carvings, we’ve been making art to tell stories about our world and ourselves since the Paleolithic Era. And the artwork on the walls of the Lubang Jeriji Saleh cave complex in Indonesia could be up to 52,000 years old.

If you’re like me, you have a never-ending text thread with your friends that’s stuffed full of memes, videos, and general goofiness. But put that into the context of fifty-thousand years of trying to see and be seen? It seems less goofy.

Look, I love words. I believe in them — passionately. But it’s clear that we as humans, even in the digital age, are greedy for beauty. We hunger for it. Your customers hunger for it. Your clients and partners and internal stakeholders hunger for it.

Try to remember that you’re not just selling widgets. You’re part of the human project to create, to connect, to be remembered. So treat yourself and your work with the respect it deserves. We have the right and the obligation to be ethical, and ultimately, to be human.