This is a reminder that every single person you encounter as you walk through the world is carrying something. That something might be heavy, it might be unwieldy, it might be unbearable. There is no human being alive who isn’t carrying something.
I once read (and I wish I could remember where, it’s been decades) that when you’re sitting in a restaurant and the waiter is slow, or forgetful, or rude, or mixes up your order, you have a choice. You can decide that the waiter is incompetent or a jerk, short the tip, and leave a bad review. Or you can try to remember that the waiter is a fellow human, who might have a sick parent or a sick child, who might be facing a medical or financial or relationship challenge of their own, who might be scared or overwhelmed or sad - and meet that person with compassion.
If you follow me on Instagram, you hear me say this often: We need to Practice Seeing Differently. And this is exactly what I mean:
Challenge our assumptions. (Actually, first notice when we’re making assumptions, and then challenge them.) Meet our judgments with curiosity. Investigate the things about which we’re certain. And greet the people we encounter with an awareness of our shared humanity.
When I first started emailing myself and a few friends with lists of good things, back in the Summer of 2015, I knew it was helping me to pay attention to the good in my life; I knew it was good for my brain, and that the practice was building new neural pathways. I also knew that to share - to give and receive - good things was a necessary point of connection, a way we can help each other. Tend to each other, maybe.
What I didn’t truly understand, though, until this Substack began to really grow and grow in 2025, is that this practice is also a way that we can see each other. The simple act of sharing - giving and receiving - good things, expands our awareness of each other’s humanity.
No matter how different we might be, we are also so much the same. No example is more illustrative of this than how many of us there are here, spanning decades, from all over the world, with a range of life experiences we can’t even fathom - all of us appreciating clean sheets on our beds and the air we breathe.
This is why we practice.
Thursday:
The nostalgic taste of a black olive straight out of the can.
I will never not be delighted by the escalator especially for grocery carts in a two-story store.
Reading a book (Arcadia by Lauren Groff) that is so beautifully written it feels like a painting made with words.
Now you? Tell me 3 good things?
Xo.
