Once upon a former time, the kind of time that lives in the “before” of a family, there was a house filled with laughter that sounded like wind chimes in summer.
In that house lived a father who believed in small things. He believed that planting seeds mattered. He believed that reading one more story mattered. He believed that even on the heaviest days, hope could be carried in a pocket like a smooth stone.
And most of all, he believed in faith.
Not the loud, thunderous kind that shouts at mountains. But the quiet kind. The kind that wakes up.
When he was alive, he would kneel beside his little boy every night and say, “Faith isn’t about knowing the whole road. It’s about taking the next step, even when you can only see a few inches ahead.”
The boy would nod solemnly, though he barely understood. He thought faith was like a flashlight. Years later, he would realize it was more like a firefly.
Then one winter morning, the house grew too quiet. The wind chimes did not sing. The father was gone. And the word former crept into their lives.
Former laughter. Former Sunday pancakes. Former everything.
His mother folded into herself like a wilted letter. She moved through rooms as if the air were thick water. She stopped opening the curtains. She stopped humming while washing dishes.
Grief is a heavy coat. She wore it even indoors. The little boy watched. Children notice when the light changes.
One evening, he found her sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at nothing. “Mom,” he asked gently, “why don’t we open the windows anymore?” She tried to smile. It trembled. “Because it’s cold,” she said.
But he knew it wasn’t the weather. He climbed onto the bed beside her and reached into his pocket. From it, he pulled a small, smooth stone. She recognized it instantly. It was the one his father used to hold during long talks on the porch.
“What are you doing with that?” she whispered. He looked up at her with eyes too wise for his few years.
“Dad said faith isn’t knowing the whole road,” he said carefully, as if placing each word where it belonged. “It’s taking the next step when you can only see a little bit.”
Her breath caught. “He said sometimes you only get a few inches of light,” the boy continued, “but that’s enough for one step. And then another.”
Tears slid quietly down her cheeks. “But I can’t see the road anymore,” she admitted.
The boy slid off the bed and padded to the window. He tugged the curtains open just a little.
Outside, the sky was bruised purple with evening. And in the garden, faintly, flickering, were fireflies.
“Mom,” he said softly, “they don’t light up the whole yard. Just a tiny part. But they still shine.”
She stared at the few small lights blinking bravely against the dark. He walked back and placed the stone in her hand.
“You taught me to tie my shoes,” he said. “You taught me to say thank you.” “And Dad taught me faith.”
He squeezed her fingers around the stone. “So now I’m teaching you.” Her shoulders shook, not with collapse this time, but with something breaking open.
Grief had told her to stop. But faith – small, stubborn, glowing faith, was asking her to move.
Not tomorrow, not perfectly, but just one step.
The next morning, she opened the curtains all the way. She didn’t know how she would carry the days without him. She didn’t know how to fill the spaces he once occupied. But she packed a lunch. She brushed her hair. She walked her son to school. Only a few inches of road were visible, but she stepped anyway.
Years later, when the boy grew tall and the house filled with a new kind of laughter, he would remember that winter. He would remember that sometimes children are given a sacred task…
To hold the light steady when grown-ups forget where they placed it. Faith is not the absence of sorrow. It is the decision to rise while sorrow still sits beside you.
It is picking up the stone, opening the window, letting in even the faintest glow.
And understanding that even a few flickers are enough to begin again.
Once upon a time, in a quiet little village school, there was a boy who carried a small glass jar.
Inside the jar was a firefly. It was not the brightest firefly in the meadow. It did not glow on command. Sometimes its light flickered when the other fireflies shone boldly and in perfect rhythm.
But when the night was still, when the wind stopped fidgeting and the world grew patient, that tiny firefly glowed in colors no one had seen before.
Lavender, silver, and soft gold. The other children did not wait for stillness. They shook the jar. “Why doesn’t it glow like ours?” they laughed. Each shake made the light tremble. Each laugh dimmed it further. One day, someone stuck a label on the jar.
Defective. And the boy began to believe the label more than the light.
Now let me step out of the parable. If I could ban one word from everyday English, it would be retard, and every variation of it.
Not because I am overly sensitive. Not because language shouldn’t evolve, but because I know what that word does when it lands on a child’s mind.
I know because I was that child.
I was diagnosed young. I struggled in ways that were invisible and confusing. Social anxiety wrapped itself around me like barbed wire. I overthought every sentence before speaking it. I raised my hand with trembling hope, not to show off, but to understand.
Academically, I performed well. On paper, I was “fine.” So there was no reason to move schools. No reason to intervene drastically. Those were days before neurodiversity was widely understood or compassionately discussed. My teachers and parents supported me as best they could. The assumption was simple:
She will cope. And promise, I tried, but there was a boy in my class. Let’s call him “B. (For bully of course)”
Every time I answered a question. Every time I asked for clarification. Every time my comment sounded slightly different from what was expected.
“Retard.”
Whispered, snickered, passed in folded notes across desks like contraband. Sometimes, it was loud, other times subtle, but it was consistent.
And consistency is what makes a word dangerous. Because one insult can sting, but repetition rewires. Here is what that word actually does. It does not just describe. It implants.
It plants doubt where curiosity once lived. It teaches a child to lower their hand even when they know the answer. It teaches silence as survival. It tells a child…You are not just different. You are defective.
When you are young, you do not have the emotional architecture to dismantle cruelty. You absorb it. It seeps in quietly. It sits in your chest during exams. It whispers when you try something new.
It becomes the narrator of your inner world. And the tragedy? The word is often thrown casually, carelessly, as a joke, as slang. But to the child on the receiving end, it is never a slang.
It is a verdict.
What makes the word particularly vicious is its history. It was once used clinically. Then it was weaponized. Then it was normalized as playground humor. When language turns people into punchlines, it erodes empathy.
Children who are wired differently, who process stimuli differently, who feel intensely, who need clarification, who think in spirals instead of straight lines, are already navigating a world not designed for them.
To add a slur to that journey is to add weight to a swimmer who is already learning to stay afloat. And the psyche of a child is not steel. It is wet cement. Whatever presses into it early leaves an imprint.
When I finally gathered the courage to tell the teachers, it wasn’t because the word hurt that day. It was because I was beginning to believe it. That is the real damage. Not tears, or embarrassment, but internalization.
The quiet shift from “They are being cruel” to “Maybe they are right.” And no child deserves that shift. No child deserves to question their worth because their brain dances to a different rhythm.
If I could, I would ban the word, and remove it from casual cruelty. I would wipe it from playground vocabulary, from memes, and from lazy humor, because language shapes culture, and culture shapes children, and children shape the future.
We speak so easily about inclusion now. About neurodiversity. About mental health. But inclusion is not just ramps and policies and awareness months.
Inclusion begins in the mouth. In the words we choose not to use. I detest that word not because I am fragile, but because I remember sitting in a classroom, knowing the answer, and deciding not to raise my hand.
And the world lost a little bit of lavender, silver, and soft gold that day.
Words can wound, but they can also protect. If I could ban this word, I would. And in its place, I would teach children a new one:
Different. Because different is not defective. Different is just a firefly waiting for stillness.
Goodbye to midnight snacks that never asked, And the fridge’s mysterious whispers from the past. Farewell to Netflix binges that stole my youth, And pretending kale is somehow the truth.
Bye-bye to snooze buttons, my trusty lie, And to “five more minutes” that made mornings cry. Farewell to procrastination, the sly little sprite, Who turned every small task into a heroic fight.
But, hello to mornings that don’t feel tragic, To small steps that somehow feel magic. Hello to water that doesn’t taste like punishment, And workouts that almost make sense.
I may trip, I may stumble, I may sigh, But at least now I’ll do it with my eyes open wide. Endings are tricky, they feel like a loss, But sometimes goodbye is a cosmic boss.
It kicks you out of the cave, into the light, Makes you chase the day, instead of fleeing the night. So here’s to habits I leave in the past, And to the slightly less lazy me, at last.
I am a sunflower, tall but waiting, my golden face poised like a promise. The sun pours itself into me, but even its warmth is not enough, I have longed for hands, hands that cradle rather than grasp.
And then, your hand appears, soft as wind, curving around me like sunlight made tangible. I feel every line of your palm, every tender pressure, and I bloom not in the light of the sky alone, but in the devotion of your touch.
You hold me as if I were fragile, and yet I am fierce, a riot of yellow and green, each petal trembling with joy, each seed in my heart singing of life. The sun and I, we share our secrets through you, the warmth flowing from your hand becoming a second sun, a quiet thunder of praise that makes me rise.
Cradled, I know the world in new ways, the soil hums beneath me, my sisters sway in silent applause, and the wind bends to witness the sacred exchange. You do not pluck, you do not bend me to will— you honor the life within, and I respond, radiant, unstoppable, alive.
Stay. Let your hand linger. Let the sun and your warmth conspire, for in this moment, I am fully seen. Not just a flower, but a story of longing, of light returned, a hymn written in yellow, cradled in the quiet reverence of your hands.
I sauntered first through childhood fields, where laughter fell like sunlight on my skin, and every stone and stick was a universe I held without knowing. Time had no weight; the world spoke softly, and I listened with wide, untested eyes.
I sauntered then through adolescence, feet brushing against the thorned edges of choice, heart full of echoes I could not yet name. I stumbled, I fell, and yet I rose, each bruise a lesson etched into the marrow of becoming.
I sauntered through young adulthood, hands full of dreams, of love, of doubts, chasing horizons that moved with me, learning that life’s rhythm is not in reaching but in noticing the cadence of each step.
I saunter now through the years with the weight of knowing that joy and sorrow are inseparable companions, that all the rushing and striving cannot outrun the quiet within.
And here, in this deliberate wandering, I understand… to saunter is to grow from the inside out, to let each moment unfold, to carry the child, the dreamer, the struggler and the wise self all together in a single, measured step.
Life’s lesson walks beside me, whispering…transformation begins not at the path’s end, but in the patient, reflective steps along it.
What are your thoughts on life after death? Where do you think we go when we die? Perhaps you think you’ll live eternally in a heavenly paradise surrounded by your loved ones. Maybe you don’t believe any of that stuff and think that when we die, we die.
Whatever your beliefs, certain facts are inescapable. Once you are dead, your earthly body will perish along with you.
Paul, this is beautiful – thank you for sharing it. I love how you strip away all the heavenly fanfare and get straight to the core – pure awareness. And the kicker? We don’t have to wait until we’re dead to experience it.
It reminds me and many others that peace isn’t somewhere “out there” – it’s here, in this very breath, this very moment. Sit on the riverbank of your thoughts, watch them drift by, and suddenly life’s chaos starts to feel… optional.
Your example of Sri Ramana Maharshi shows the power of focus, surrender, and presence. Bliss, peace, pure awareness, they aren’t waiting for us at the end of life. They’re already here, waiting for us to notice.
No feasts, no symphonies, no Ozzie Osbourne jams at dawn required. Just noticing. Just being.
Thank you for this reminder – it’s rare to read something that makes the mind nod and the heart smile at the same time.
Sometimes, I envision weird things. Not in a negative way, not as escape, but as a path, a way to step outside the noise of daily life and look inward.
These visions, strange or improbable, give me space to reflect, to see patterns in myself, to confront the choices I make, and to imagine who I could become.
They are like mirrors held up to the mind, sometimes unsettling, always instructive, showing me the contours of my own growth.
I sometimes imagine myself as that baby, lying in a sunlit room, completely unaware of what lay ahead, yet entirely known by the hands that held me. I feel the soft scent of shampoo, the warmth of sunshine spilling across my skin, and the bond between life and me – pure, total, unbroken. In that moment, I was engulfed in innocence, and I knew, without knowing, that I was safe. Someone had whispered a promise to protect me, and the world had answered with quiet magic.
As I grew, the story of life became more complex. Sunshine no longer arrived without shadows. Decisions, once given, now demanded attention. The same innocence that once came naturally now had to be remembered, sought, and chosen. Lessons of kindness, patience, and compassion were no longer delivered, they were ours to live or ignore.
Life, in its deep currents, offered no guarantees. I learned that the same power that nurtured me – the power to protect, to act with care, to love, was not outside myself. It had always been mine to wield or neglect. I could allow myself to harden, to turn away from suffering, or I could extend the same gentle care that had once held me. Every thought, every action, became a reflection of the self, a choice to engulf the world with light, or shadow.
The truth became clear – the bond with our own innocence never truly disappears. That sleeping baby, the one wrapped in sunlight and promise, lives quietly within me, waiting. All the total power to heal, to choose compassion, to act with care, has always been within. It was never outside, never in someone else’s hands. I am the source. I am the one who chooses whether to let kindness guide my steps, or bitterness.
We do not grow to lose ourselves. We grow to remember. Every conscious act of gentleness, every decision to protect, every moment of awareness is a return to that original light. Life is an invitation, endlessly repeated, to honor the innocence within, to nurture it, and to let its spark shape the world we touch.
In the end, it is simple and profound – the world changes only as we choose to change it. The first step is always within. Always you.
The 10 Commandments I’d Give My Teenage Self (With a Wink and a Snort)
1. Thou Shalt Not Trust Mirrors (or Snapchat Filters). Appearances are deceptive. That zit in the mirror is plotting world domination, and the person strutting in designer sneakers is probably wearing socks with holes the size of small galaxies.
2. Thou Shalt Not Overthink… Seriously, Don’t. Overthinking is like a hamster on a tiny wheel in your brain. Stop feeding it pizza. Most of the time, nobody cares if you tripped in the cafeteria or sang the wrong lyrics to that one song.
3. Thou Shalt Remember: Rumors Are Vomit from Insecure Souls. Gossip is like glitter, impossible to get rid of, but completely meaningless. Let it slide off you like the emotional equivalent of a raincoat.
4. Thou Shalt Not Worship the False God of Popularity. Popularity is just a Snapchat filter with a crown. Today’s cool kid is tomorrow’s awkward TikTok fail. Focus on friends who laugh at your jokes instead of “likes.”
5. Thou Shalt Enjoy Life, Even If Thy Knees Hurt and Thy Locker Smells. High school is fleeting. One day you’ll look back and realize math class was mildly tragic, but also secretly hilarious. Dance in the hallways. Laugh at your own hair. Cherish the chaos.
6. Thou Shalt Not Fear Looking Ridiculous. Wearing socks that don’t match? Singing too loud in the shower? Laugh and own it. Confidence is the only accessory that never goes out of style.
7. Thou Shalt Not Take Rejection Personally (Even From Your Crush). Remember, a “no” from someone who couldn’t handle your brilliance is just a cosmic favor. The world owes you nothing, except maybe fries at lunch.
8. Thou Shalt Eat the Pizza, Skip the Drama. Life is short, hormones are long, and broccoli is optional. Prioritize joy. Also, beware the cafeteria’s edible science experiment.
9. Thou Shalt Befriend Weirdness. Normal is overrated. The quirky kid in the corner today is the future CEO, Grammy winner, or eccentric billionaire you’ll secretly envy. Embrace your weird.
10. Thou Shalt Remember That Everything Will Make Sense (Or Not). Spoiler: You’ll still have no idea what you’re doing at 30, but that’s okay. Laugh, repeat and keep snacks nearby. Life is more fun when you don’t take it too seriously.
Bonus Commandment (Because Humor Is Mandatory): Thou shalt always keep a stash of chocolate, memes, and a sarcastic comment ready for emergencies. Trust me… teenage life is mostly emergencies.
From the sky, there are no fences. No inked boundaries. No colored maps. Just land folding into river, river leaning into ocean, mountain rising without a passport. And yet, on paper, we draw lines so fiercely that we forget they were drawn by hands like ours.
There is a dangerous illusion that territory equals ownership, that arrival equals authority, that power grants permanence. History tells a more complicated story. Every nation has layers beneath it, footsteps beneath footsteps, languages beneath languages, civilizations beneath skylines. The soil remembers what politics prefers to forget.
But this is not an argument about who belongs more. It is a question about what belonging means.
When public debates reduce human beings to categories, legal or illegal, worthy or unworthy, asset or burden, we have already surrendered something sacred. A society is not measured by how loudly it guards its gates, but by how wisely it governs its conscience.
Equal rights are not sentimental luxuries; they are structural necessities. When dignity is selective, instability follows. When justice tilts toward convenience, trust erodes. A system that safeguards one group today may abandon another tomorrow. Fairness is not charity. It is insurance for everyone.
AndYet, fairness itself is rarely simple.
Consider this – a policy designed to prioritize local workers may protect one family’s income while quietly denying another family’s chance to rebuild their life. A housing initiative intended to correct historical inequities might feel, to someone else, like sudden exclusion. What appears balanced from one vantage point can feel like displacement from another.
Justice, then, cannot be reduced to slogans. It requires precision, humility, and constant recalibration.
Resources on this planet are abundant in possibility, but access to them is uneven by design. Education, healthcare, clean water, safe neighborhoods, these are not abstract ideals. They are the infrastructure of human potential. When people lack them, the loss is not only personal; it is collective. Talent untended becomes innovation unrealized. Hope unsupported becomes unrest misunderstood.
And yet, there is another layer we rarely examine, the theater of leadership.
Throughout history, leaders have discovered that fear mobilizes faster than empathy. Division rallies quicker than dialogue.
When citizens are preoccupied with blaming one another, they seldom scrutinize those who benefit from the conflict. Power accumulates quietly while attentionis redirectednoisily.
There is no enduring victory in pitting neighbor against neighbor. There is only temporary advantage for those at the podium.
The ordinary person, working, caregiving, striving, pays the hidden cost. Wages stagnate while rhetoric escalates. Healthcare becomes a debate instead of a guarantee. Schools become battlegrounds for ideology instead of launchpads for possibility. The emotional toll of constant polarization seeps into dinner tables, friendships, and workplaces.
But let us be careful here.
Compassion without structure can create chaos. Order without compassion can create cruelty.A nation must balance stability with humanity. It must enforce laws without erasing empathy. It must plan responsibly without hardening its heart.
Welcoming newcomers does not require abandoning citizens. Protecting citizens does not require dehumanizing newcomers. These are not mutually exclusive commitments unless we choose to make them so.
The deeper question on this World Day of Social Justice is not simply who gets to cross which border. It is whether we understand that our shared future depends on widening opportunity rather than narrowing identity.
A fair society is not one where everyone receives the same outcome. It is one where no one is denied the starting tools necessary to pursue their outcome. Where healthcare is accessible not because illness checks immigration status, but because illness is human. Where education equips rather than segregates. Where law protects without humiliating.
And perhaps most importantly, where citizens refuse to be manipulated by narratives that thrive on outrage. Look again at the planet from space. No lines. No labels. Only interdependence.
We may live within borders, but we breathe the same air. We rely on the same fragile ecosystems. We share markets, technologies, pandemics, and possibilities. The idea that one group’s suffering secures another’s safety is a short-term illusion. Stability built on exclusion is brittle.
The real strength of a nation is not measured by how tightly it clenches, but by how intelligently it builds. Social justice is not a trending phrase. It is the ongoing discipline of asking: Who is unseen? Who is unheard? Who is being used as a distraction? And who quietly benefits while the crowd argues?
If we are honest, the answer is often uncomfortable. But discomfort is not the enemy of progress. Indifference is. In the end, land does not belong to us in the way we imagine. We are temporary stewards of something far older than our policies and far more enduring than our politics.
The lines we draw will fade. The impact we have on one another will not.
And when the arguments grow loud and the flags grow larger, it helps to remember a quieter truth…the land and its rivers were never possessions in the first place. They existed long before charters, constitutions, or claims.
They will outlast every administration and every argument. Most families in this country and countless others, began as arrivals, some fleeing famine, some escaping persecution, some chasing possibility, growth.
Time softened their accents, rooted their names into neighborhoods, and turned “newcomer” into “native-born.”And because of those who came before us, who endured, built, and believed, we too, became naturalized citizens of the very ground they once stepped onto as strangers.
Yet history has a peculiar irony, once settled, people often guard the door they themselves once entered. If we are honest, we are all temporary residents on borrowed ground, inheritors of journeys we did not begin.
The question is not who arrived first, but whether we remember our own arrival with enough humility to treat the next one with dignity.
Once upon a Tuesday, because revelations never happen on Mondays, there was a small town where everyone wore invisible crowns. They weren’t born with them. They earned them the day they learned to pretend.
The baker pretended he wasn’t tired. The teacher pretended she wasn’t afraid. The mayor pretended he knew what he was doing. The children pretended to be dragons, astronauts, veterinarians, kings.
In this town, pretending was currency. If you pretended convincingly enough, doors opened. If you pretended long enough, people called it confidence. If you pretended boldly enough, they called it leadership.
And one day, a child asked, “What happens if we stop pretending?”
The town grew very quiet.
Because no one could remember what they were before the crowns.
Now, let’s remove the fairy dust and look at ourselves.
We pretend constantly.
We pretend we understand the tax system. We pretend we didn’t Google “how to fold a fitted sheet” at midnight. We pretend we’re not checking if our message was seen. We pretend we’re “just tired” when we’re actually overwhelmed. We pretend the group chat doesn’t emotionally destabilize us.
And the wild part?
Most of the things we call adulthood are just upgraded pretending.
“Circling back” is pretending we are calm. “Per my last email” is pretending we are calm but sharpening knives. “I’m flexible” is pretending we don’t have strong opinions. “I’m fine” is pretending and it deserves its own museum.
But here’s the twist. Pretending is not always deception. Sometimes it is rehearsal. Confidence, in many cases, is just courage that started as pretend.
Even love begins with pretending a little, pretending to trust, pretending to be open, pretending this person might stay. And slowly the pretending softens into truth.
The danger is not pretending.The danger is forgetting you are doing it.
When the mask fuses to the skin. When “I’m fine” becomes a personality. When survival performance becomes identity. Because if we never take off the crown, we forget what our own head feels like.
And yet, without pretending, no actor would step on stage, no entrepreneur would pitch, no writer would publish, no child would roar like a dragon and discover her voice can fill a room.
Maybe pretending is the most human thing we do. It is imagination wearing business attire. It is fear trying on bravery. It is hope practicing.
So, perhaps the question isn’t whether we pretend. It’s this…
Pieces Of My Heart 