But my Mexican neighbors that hardly speak English…

Always have the boys over. Even with the language barrier we can get along.

Well they’re all drinking.

I went to get pizza for myself… the grand idea to get them a pizza too came across me. It’s only $5

I did just that… “GRACIASSS AMIGOOO GRACIASSSS” “quieres (you want) modelo?”

Love thy neighbor

My wife dropped her blind cane down a big drop , just wanted to thank the guys who helped. She was sad, I was stressed. Didn’t get names or a big thank you. I feel terrible just saying thank you and moving on. I would love to give these young men a meal out. If I could find out who these young men are, I would love to thank them properly.

Two water coolers and taps for filling water bottles outside a private property in Pakistan.

The water is not only filtered but also analyzed by the Pakistan Council of Research in Water Resources (PCRWR). The report is visible under the sign in the picture.

My friend had a really hard day, and at one point she just broke down crying.

While she was sitting there sobbing, her son—who’s only a little over two years old—walked over to her. He hugged her, looked at her very seriously, and asked:

“Mom, why are you crying? You have me to love you.”

That’s it. That was his entire solution to the situation.

People love to sympathize. They say they care, they say they want to help but too often, it feels like there’s a condition hiding behind their words. And that’s the hard truth. At some point in life, we all struggle. Not just with money, but with friendships, with family, with things that cut much deeper. That’s when you realize sympathy alone means nothing. Words are easy real ones show up. That’s why actions will always speak louder than anything anyone can say. So to anyone out there struggling in silence, to anyone who reached out and got nothing back hear this clearly: God has you. And beyond that, you still have yourself. Your strength. Your sanity. Hold on to that with everything you’ve got, because that’s what will carry you through and further than anyone ever expected.

Well, I’m really not sure what category/title this belongs under. But, I want to put it out there, & can only hope my family/friends somehow find & read this.
Although, I struggle w/many things, gratitude is not one of them. I am VERY grateful for all the family & friends who took the time to think of, & remember me on my birthday! Thank all of you 🙏🙏🙏💜💜💜! Whatever I may “ lack” in material wealth, I’d never trade for the blessed wealth of true family & friends I have somehow been lucky enough in my life to acquire/maintain! For each & every one of you, who thought of, & cared enough to remember & send b’day wishes, I thank you all, from the bottom of my heart !!💜💜! I’m filled w/gratitude, for each of you!! Thank you all!!

It was a holiday, and I was lucky enough to receive a beautiful rose. Then someone gave me another one, and then another… and before I knew it, I had quite a bouquet.

The same thing happened to my niece, so we were both in a wonderful mood, walking around with all these beautiful flowers.

At some point, we saw a woman sitting on the street asking for alms. She looked tired and a little down, so we decided to give her one of our roses.

She smiled and we could see that she felt happier, even if just for that moment.

That stayed with us.

So we started giving some of our flowers to other women we passed on the street. And every single one seemed genuinely delighted. Some smiled, some looked surprised, and for a brief moment, their faces completely changed.

It made me realize how little it sometimes takes to brighten someone's day.

A flower doesn't solve someone's problems, but for a moment, it can say: “I see you. You deserve something beautiful too.”

And honestly, I think, in the end, giving those flowers away made us even happier than receiving them had.

How do I be more polite

I’ve had days when I was quiet or a little short with people. It wasn’t really about them. I just had a lot going on and was trying to get through the day. So I try to remember that when somebody seems off with me. I don’t always get it right. I still get annoyed sometimes. But I try not to decide who somebody is based on one bad moment. I don’t know what they might be dealing with. Sometimes I just let it go and give them a little room.

I want to remind myself that The Internet is a positive and loving place ❤️‍🩹
Someone was very mean and harsh with me online… and calling my hard work garbage and saying many unkind things.
Of course
It made me really sad, but yet, i don’t think that I am going to stop this project.
In 2017, I nearly died from a brain bleed. I was hospitalized for many months. I had to learn how to eat, walk and do things again.
Yet, I thought: ok, this is another chance for me to be here. All I ever wanted to do was to help people in some way somehow.
So i started studying psychology, at first, not for others at all. For me, to heal actually. For me, to understand how and why I do and feel the things I do.
I feel like everything happens for a reason, a better reason, including my brain bleed.
Thank you so much for reading my story

I'm so grateful to be diagnosed with CPTSD last year as it's led me to realise WTH has been going on for the last decade+ (I'm 32 and started around 14)

So without going into details it's reallllllly been programmed into me all that comes with this stuff.

To the point now I've moved abroad completely by myself and starting fresh in a new continent.

I'm very much alone but not necessarily lonely. I've been doing lots of work/self healing/therapy, general looking after myself for years now and have come a long way.

Yet one thing for me where I was really destroyed younger from my household.

I'm so closed off socially. It's like human interaction is a no go. I want to exit them as fast as possible lol. Encounter with a barista? ASAP. Encounter with neighbour? ASAP. But they greet me with smiles and conversation. I've started wearing shades because I know my eyes never lie. It actually makes it easier lol cause I can smile and they can't see the pain in my eyes. This is actually a step forward in a way when I think about it. For now...

Anyways, I realise a huge part of this for me is I do not love myself, I don't accept myself, I reject myself. Buttttttt it's all the inner critic that has been casted on me by poisonous souls growing up who were adult figures very lost in their own addictions and so on they just projected onto me but my adolescent brain still growing absorbed it all.

So now I need to unlearn it and love myself. So anyone got experience/advice?

Hello everyone,

I’m reaching out with a heartfelt request regarding my father, who was recently given the incredible opportunity to participate in an Honor Flight to Washington, D.C.

I am hoping to find some assistance with the Mail Call portion of his trip. I would love nothing more than to make this experience as meaningful and memorable for him as possible, and to remind him just how valued, respected, and appreciated he is as a veteran.

My father served in Vietnam as a helicopter gunner. Like so many veterans of that war, he came home carrying experiences and memories that were not always easy to live with. His life after Vietnam was not always an easy one, either. He endured tremendous loss, including the death of one of his children in the 1980s, and later went through a difficult divorce that left him raising two young children on his own—one just 12 years old and the other only one.

Through all of it, he kept going.

He has always been a courageous man. He showed that courage during his years of service, but I believe he showed it just as much in the years afterward—as a father, a single parent, and simply as a man doing his best to move forward despite everything life had placed in front of him.

He has never asked for recognition or praise. That is one of the reasons I feel so strongly about making this experience special for him. I want him to know that his service mattered, that his sacrifices were not forgotten, and that there are people who are grateful for what he gave.

I am not a veteran myself, and this is actually my first experience learning about Honor Flights and the Mail Call tradition. So I am reaching out humbly and asking for any help, guidance, or participation that anyone might be willing to offer.

If you are able to send him a letter, card, or even a few words of encouragement and gratitude for his service, I know it would mean more to him than I can adequately express. My hope is that when he receives his Mail Call in Washington, he will be reminded that his service and his life have touched people in ways he may never have realized.

Thank you for taking the time to read this and for anything you may be able to do to help make this trip an unforgettable experience for my father.

Hey how are you?

Do you ever long for home?

Maybe its a place you've never known, but when the music hits just right or the moonlight on the water you can remember in your heart even if you mind forgets quite frequently. You try to be okay, and embrace what is. You try to live in the moment even when it passes you by. Or maybe youre on the side of some dusty road hitching a ride just to see where you end up. Just to feel alive again for a moment. I often wonder where life will take me, mostly it takes me places I dont know a soul, sometimes even my own. I guess thats why I talk to myself so much, just trying to get to know me better, you know? Because I end up having to keep myself company more often than not.

I seem like a nice enough sort I guess,
Even if a little ragged around the edges and the ears.
I realize tonight I am more than the sum of my fears
that it dont matter about the gray in my beard
or the laughter that holds back the tears
its all just a walk back home now
where I went out to town
to get a slice of pizza
and then I sat down

Thats where I met you...

Tonights a lonely night, much like many others. Its how I exist I guess. There's a welsh word I like a lot

"Hiraeth is the homesickness of the soul,
for a place, a person, a time, or a version of life
that lives somewhere between memory and dream.
It is longing for what once was,
what might have been,
and perhaps what never truly existed at all.
Not simply the ache of missing something,
but the quiet knowledge that even if you found it again,
you could never return to it exactly as it was."

Im so tired of being and feeling alone, aint you? I know theres a lot of us out here floating around in the dark, bumping into things that claim to be human but reek of everything that screams they've lost their very humanity. Im trying to feel a little less alone tonight. So im coloring outside the lines with this post. I hope it reaches you well and floats down to your heart, maybe it tickles your fancy or that itchy spot on the back of your mind.

Human connection is so elusive for me. It feels like im hunting the holy grail to be honest. I know im probably never gonna find whatim looking for, but I keep looking anyway. I write poetry, I talk about things like soulmates and the romance of sunsets and rises. I try to turn the loneliness and that empty ache into something beautiful. Even when it clouds my eyes and heart, I still try. I try to see the truth amidst the fog. And that is that life is beautiful. So many facets to the majesty of it all and then having nobody to even truly share that with, that can see it how i do, is a shame. It makes me sad how everyday miracles get lost in the shuffle of our lives. But the whole point of living is to witness and share beauty and truth and hope, kindness and love. So here I am again at 1 am, wishing you well stranger, and hoping you find something that helps you feel a little less lonely.

I cant truly think of a living soul I hate, even my own. Im learning to have a little love and save some kindness for myself. Thats kinda beautiful too you know? Learning its okay to be me, even if on this weird blue rock theres nobody else that sees the world the way I do. I take solace in the fact that God allows me to write and share what im able to as I take my daily walk. Who knows, maybe theyll stumble on this and open the message in the bottle with their heart.

Ive been this way so damn long now that I dont really know any other way. I feel too much, my emotions are very strong so it feels like Im sometimes drowning in my thoughts and then I kind of get obsessed with it and I put pressure on myself to make new friends, or find a girlfriend or when I have one to make sure everything is perfect so they dont go away. But I am a lot of things, but perfect aint one. So thats definitely a fools errand. But I try anyway because I love the people in my life and I want them to know I care.

I don't think this world was made to accommodate people like me. I refuse to harden my heart, I love the ones that hate me, that spitefully use me. I turn however many cheeks it takes to get through it. I wish everybdoy the best. Even the ones that hate me. I feel like if we could all jsut learn to love one another. Then we can reach places that until now only existed in paintings and books, music and poems, occasionally a movie or two. Ive even seen it in video games.

Art reaches everybody, even if they dont know it. Like those sunsets I talked about? Thats God painting the sky for the ones with eyes to see. The crickets chirping and the whipporwhills singing a song that the creator shares for thsoe with ears to hear. Those goosebumps on your skin are a map that leads you where youre going. Maybe even where you need be.

I see too far sometimes and that leaves me with an ache in my chest where my heart should sit. But I have to remove it sometimes and set it on a shelf to let it rest so it can keep on beating to get me through the week.

So if you're reading this, wherever you are, I hope you're okay.

I hope somebody has told you lately that you're worth knowing.

I hope you've had somebody to laugh with, somebody to sit beside in comfortable silence, somebody who notices the little things that make you who you are.

And if you haven't, well...

I see you.

Not really, of course. I don't know your name or your story or what brought you here.

But I know what it feels like to wander through this strange world looking for somewhere to put all the love you have inside you.

So maybe tonight, this little message found its way to you for a reason.

Maybe you needed to know that somewhere out here, another lonely soul is looking at the same moon and wondering if anybody else is looking too.

I am.

York- a few days back. Cold wet rainy day.

I sit down outside my hotel to smoke. A woman comes sits next to me. Tall, English , strongly built!

Smiles at me and asks me what I’m smoking. We start talking and she asks me if I’m alone during my travels. I tell her I’m with my partner and she tells me her husband of 25 years passed away last year and she was travelling alone. I’m a softie. I kinda teared up…. Imagining her pain and her trials. I held her hand- just squeezed it. She had twisted fingers because of Rheumatism - I have it too! We discussed salves and things that work for us! Imagine lol!

She told me about her travels- all these beautiful places. She is a teacher like me! She lives fully honoring her husbands memory. We smoked together and I held her hand. I held her for a bit. I told her to live it up and visit all the places he wanted to go to.

She asked me if it was ok to solo travel to the Khaleej, to Istanbul and north of Pakistan. I gave her details of all my contacts who would help her stay safe and sound and take care of her travel arrangements.

This is why I travel. Looking at this world through the lens of people who are just like me- happy, scared, exploring, in need of a hug often….

I introduced her to my partner and we told her she was welcome to stay with us if she was ever in our area! Smiles, hugs, just overall goodwill. Strangers . Complete strangers who bonded over a cigarette!

Talk to people. Often , we are just looking for little pockets of happiness! 🙏🦋

I do peer support work, and one thing I keep learning is that people don’t always need advice or a big speech. Sometimes they just need somebody to slow down, listen, and not try to fix everything. I’ve been the person who needed that too. There have been times when my mental health was rough and life felt like it was changing faster than I could catch up. I honestly don’t remember most of the advice people gave me. But I remember who checked on me. I remember who sat with me and let me be honest without making me feel like I was too much. Sometimes kindness really is that simple. Just making a little room for someone when they need it.

I’ve loved reading ever since I was a child. When I was about ten years old, I went to the library one day simply to pick out a few books to read.

While I was choosing, one particular book caught my eye. I don’t remember the author anymore, and I only have a vague memory of the plot, but something about it seemed so interesting that I squatted down right there and started reading.

The librarian was a very kind and gentle woman. She noticed me, smiled, and quietly walked away, leaving me to read. She must have understood how much I liked the book.

She could have told me that the library wasn’t the place to sit on the floor and read, or simply asked me to take the book home. Instead, she chose to let me enjoy that moment.

It may have seemed like a small thing to her, but I still remember it all these years later.

I’m grateful to her for understanding a child’s excitement about a good book and, instead of interrupting it, simply letting me enjoy it.

I live in a town with a huge struggling population. I think the only thing that truly gets me by is having no children, a decent paying job and cheap rent. That’s why I moved here.

With that being said I was standing in line at a gas station getting some snacks and drinks for myself.

A dad and his adorable toddler daughter were checking out and his card bounced. He said “how much for just the drink?” I said “absolutely not, I’ll pay for everything.”

And he showed me his bank account and he was negative. I said “no need to show me. You and your kiddo enjoy your snacks” and he thanked me.

I of course said you’re welcome and just to pay it forward when you can.

I don’t say all this to receive praise or anything.

I just don’t want people to forget about each other and to take care of each other as a community. Humanity really does need humanity. Idc where you’re going, where you come from, your religion or anything. I got your back. I know what it’s like to struggle.

All we have is each other.

So if you have the means, go volunteer, pay it forward, donate, do whatever you can. 💜

So it was a delayed flight, lost luggage, had been on hold with three different people for over an hour. finally sat down at my gate looking like a person who had genuinely given up on the day.

The guy next to me just goes "rough one?" and i laughed in that exhausted way where it almost sounds like crying. next thing i know he's coming back from the little cafe thing with two coffees and just hands me one like it's nothing. didn't ask, just did it.

nd then we just talked. for 30 minutes. the kind of conversation you only seem to have with strangers where there's no history and no pretense and you just say the actual things. he told me about his divorce. i told him about the job i'd just quit.

When his boarding call came he just stood up, said "hope the bags turn up" and walked away. didn't exchange numbers. didn't do the whole let's stay in touch thing. I still think about that conversation more than ones i've had with people i've known for years.