Tag: love

Find Someone Who is a Real Shot of Life

“After so many lackluster encounters, meeting that rare man or woman who lights you up, is interesting and engaged, can ask questions and hold a conversation, you know you’ve met someone who is a real shot of life.”

Do you remember when you met someone who left such an impression on you that you couldn’t wait to see them again? They give you that shot of life because of how vivacious, entertaining, and lively they are, which have become exceedingly rare qualities these days. We often go through our day-to-day routines around people who are nice but either not very interesting or not very engaging. It could be a dull coworker, a disinterested boss, or a flummoxed stranger who can’t hold a conversation even when it’s about the weather.

After so many lackluster encounters, meeting that rare man or woman who lights you up, is interesting and engaged, can ask questions and hold a conversation, you know you’ve met someone who is a real shot of life. They don’t need to necessarily fulfill the role of a romantic partner or a friend or a colleague but just being around them makes you feel better and they see you as an actual person rather than a means to an end. There’s real light behind their eyes, there is depth to them that you want to uncover, and they can put forth effort into making themselves available to you.

There’s a balance there as you don’t want someone who is lively, but is also not overbearing, not respectful of your boundaries or just takes too many risks that could lead to trouble. There are several qualities to look for in people you should want to be around: curiosity, presence, playfulness, storytelling, humorous, reciprocity, initiative, depth, and vitality. They don’t necessarily need to be extroverted either but it’s more about how they treat you, if they remember you, they make the effort to see you again, and they know that interactions and conversations are not meant to be a monologue.

Being charismatic and making yourself known to others is part of it but it’s also being engaged and taking a normal interaction and making it better. For some examples, it could be the bartender who remembers your birthday if you have been a regular there for years, the woman or man at a dinner party who asks an engaging question about your background, the coworker who cracks a funny joke to you privately about the latest rule at the office, or even the traveler on the road who takes the time to hear your own story after they’ve told you theirs and will react to it with real interest.

A lot of modern life is repetitive and many of our interactions with other people, especially strangers are quite mundane. Most interactions are shallow or don’t happen at all considering how much technology is absorbing our limited attention spans. When somebody comes along and breaks up your routine and lights up your day, you’ll remember them for weeks or months or even years later just because how special it was compared to most other interactions. It’s not even that it was an extraordinary meeting, but it was more about interested that person was, how they made you feel seen, and the depth and realness of the conversation.

When someone takes you out of that loop of emails -> meetings -> screentime -> commuting to focus on them alone, that is powerful and exceedingly rare to have. The ideal is that the ‘real shot of life’ this person gives you is energy without chaos, confidence without arrogance, curiosity without obsession, spontaneity without recklessness, and warmth without neediness. Having a real shot of life someone isn’t about the adrenaline they can give you, it’s about when they make you feel alive and present in the moment.

Perhaps the best thing we can do is try to become a ‘shot of life’ for someone else and they can do the same for you in return by setting the example for them. That doesn’t mean becoming the loudest person in the room, constantly entertaining everyone, or turning yourself into some larger-than-life personality. It means staying curious about the world. It’s about asking questions and listen to the answers. Develop new hobbies and interests in your life. Try new things and learn new things as well. Tell stories and jokes without fear of how they’ll be perceived. Make plans and get outside more often and away from your tech devices.

Be willing to laugh at yourself and your mistakes. Put the phone away and give someone your full attention to be truly present with them. Most importantly, try and remember more about other people you care about and take note of who they are. In a world where so many interactions have become transactional, distracted, or purely obligatory, genuine engagement has become a gift. You never know when someone else might desperately need the little bit of energy, humor, curiosity, or warmth that you have to offer.

Maybe that is ultimately why someone who is a ‘real shot of life’ leaves such a lasting impression on us. They remind us that life doesn’t have to feel like a series of obligations, routines, meetings, errands, and small talk. Occasionally, someone comes along and shakes us out of that rhythm, whether in our hometown or on the road. We talk for hours with them when we expected to talk for twenty minutes. We laugh and joke harder than we have in weeks. We find ourselves looking forward to seeing them again before we’ve even said goodbye.

They don’t necessarily become our best friend, romantic partner, or lifelong companion. Sometimes, they simply pass through our lives for a brief period and leave something memorable behind. For however long they’re there in your life, they make the world feel a little more interesting, a little more connected, and a little more alive. Perhaps that’s the real mark of someone who is a ‘shot of life’: after spending time with them, you walk away feeling more alive yourself.

Mind Your Manners and Niceties in Public

“Sadly, this is not an isolated occurrence in the post-COVID world as manners have declined, niceties are becoming rarer, and kind gestures to strangers are less common than before.”

When someone is walking towards you on the sidewalk and you know they’re going to bump into you if you or them don’t change course, what do you do then? In my case, I realize they are in my path as I try to be aware of my surroundings, especially in my city as I’m walking and trying not to be on my phone and I’ll move aside for that person accordingly. While I don’t mind making the gesture myself to avoid a collision with that person unnecessarily, the fact that they don’t make any attempt to move themselves out of our colliding path or at least acknowledge my presence instead of being on their phone or talking to a friend reflects a clear lack of manners and niceties we should expect from one another when in public.

Sadly, this is not an isolated occurrence in the post-COVID world as manners have declined, niceties are becoming rarer, and kind gestures to strangers are less common than before. When you live in a city or an urban area especially, these manners and niceties help make the day much easier even when you’re dealing with a lot more people around you. In rural or suburban areas, the pace is slower and there are fewer people, so these manners are more enforced and easier to take note of than in cities. However, our societal expectations around manners and niceties need a real refresher in terms of what to do and what not to do in public spaces.

I don’t expect the average person to have much awareness of what’s customary and what’s not customary manners wise because it really hasn’t been drilled into them by their family, friends, or even from school or work in years. Therefore, we really must do the basic work again in our own day-to-day lives of setting the example, educating others when feasible, and working towards establishing public service announcements or at least some consistent leadership from those of us who have a bigger microphone or outreach capacity to others.

What are the signs of a lack of manners and niceties these days you may ask? The list is evolving but these are the ones that I was taught never to do and there are some newer ones with technology that have been added to my list as well. When you think of common niceties that make things better for everyone, think about the following examples: not littering, don’t cut the line, don’t have loud conversations in public if you can’t maintain an indoor voice, returning your shopping cart when you’re done using it, saying thank you when someone holds the door or being that person who holds the door for the next person behind you. When it comes to driving a vehicle, never park in the handicapped spot unless you or someone with you is handicapped, not using the HOV lane on the highway if you’re driving by yourself, and not tailgating someone’s vehicle when you can maintain distance from them safely.

In addition, certain behaviors that are encouraged or tolerated now which should go back to being frowned upon again include wearing proper attire out in public like the gym, the airport, or the conference center. Pajamas, athletic wear, and beach wear have their places too but not where they shouldn’t be tolerated for dress. For example, you wouldn’t wear athletic wear to a church like you shouldn’t wear your flip flops to a boardroom meeting, right? Same with pajamas or athletic wear at an airport in my view. You’re flying to Dallas, not going to Planet Fitness for an intense gym session for those of you who may disagree here about the appropriateness of athletic wear.

Beyond that, it’s about being kind and courteous to others by acknowledging their presence, knowing where they are, and both of you moving aside so as not to knock into each other unwittingly because you were on your phone or you just didn’t care to move, which shouldn’t be controversial to prevent from happening. Wearing earphones or headphones at meetings, on the train, or in public is the bare minimum for mature behavior and not a big ask to lower or turn off unwanted noise or music for others around you. It pains me to say this too, but some people today need a refresher course on basic manners and niceties, and it goes even more so for the increased incidences of shoplifting, graffiti, lying while serving in a public role, cheating, and just not being truthful with either your words or your actions.

I understand that no one’s perfect and I have not been the best at times due to looking at my phone while walking, maybe getting in the way of others unnecessarily, or just not being as courteous as I could in public. I can always get better at niceties and manners and so can you. It starts with being aware of yourself, acknowledging others’ presence around you, and learning about what is common courtesy and what is not.

I don’t think it should be controversial to dress properly, move aside for each other on the sidewalk, or be respectful on the road while driving. Without these manners and niceties being consistently observed, it’s an actual sign of societal decline and we will all be worse off for it in the long run. Once these manners and niceties go away, proper behavior becomes rarer and then it’s harder to go to work, to attend school, or to build any trust with other people. Manners and niceties are the foundation of a functioning society, and we could all use refreshers on what that means nowadays.

Your Immediate World Gets Quieter As You Get Older

“Loss of loved ones and their physical presence leave a gaping hole in our lives never to be replaced. Yes, you can make new friends, establish new loving relationships, but long past are the days from your youth or even adulthood where you can count on a grandparent or even a parent to be there by your side, providing you their unconditional love, support, or encouragement.”

While we all wish for some lasting peace and quiet from time to time to find serenity in a world that becomes more intrusive and invasive. At the same time, we yearn to hear thoughts and voices again of those long lost from our lives. While the wider world can get loud, obtrusive, or downright annoying with its cacophony of sounds and noises, we yearn unsuccessfully for the unique sounds and voices from those who are long gone from this world, never to be heard from again.

Loss of loved ones and their physical presence leave a gaping hole in our lives never to be replaced. Yes, you can make new friends, establish new loving relationships, but long past are the days from your youth or even adulthood where you can count on a grandparent or even a parent to be there by your side, providing you their unconditional love, support, or encouragement.

We may be surrounded by people every day, mostly strangers, maybe a few friends, but our inner world shrinks down further when we lose the people who knew us best. Very few people in this world are there with you from birth or childhood and they can never be replaced once they pass away. When someone you’ve known your whole life goes away, it leaves a deep empty feeling and a kind of quiet that sustains just how a big loss it was from your immediate world. Memories and mementos help to ease the pain, but they are only a poor substitute or a shadow at best when it comes to establishing just how much they meant to your life.

How does one deal with the huge void that your loved one left when they passed? Well, I don’t have any easy answer here, but it’s important to do your best to think about how they would see you now that they are gone, what they would think about your life now even though they’re no longer there with you, and how would you honor their memory as best as you can with what you shared with them during your time together. Telling their story to others, putting yourself out there to establish new friendships or relationships, and preventing yourself from isolating yourself further from the wider world are all good ways to move forward even if the quiet remains when you can no longer talk to them or hear their voice.

Perhaps that is one of the stranger realities of getting older: the world around us may become larger, while our immediate world becomes smaller. We meet new people, travel to new places, build careers, fall in love, make friends, and create lives that our younger selves could never have imagined. Yet there are certain people from our earlier days who belong to a part of our story that no one else can ever occupy. We may have known them 20, 30, 40 years or so from our life’s beginning but they don’t get to see how the second half of our lives play out without them there to guide or help us. When they are gone, we don’t simply lose a person who was special to us. We lose one of the voices and presences that helped make our world feel like home.                     

Maybe the goal, then, isn’t to eliminate the quiet that remains. Maybe it is to learn how to live alongside it. To carry the stories, habits, humor, lessons, and memories of those we’ve lost into the lives we are still living. The quiet is painful because it reminds us that something precious is missing, but it is also evidence that something precious was once there. Perhaps the best way to honor the beloved people whose voices we can no longer hear is to keep living loudly enough that, in some small way, their influence can still be heard and felt through us.

If They Don’t Provide You with Peace, Don’t Indulge Them Further

“You must protect your time as much as possible, including who you decide to give it to or with whom you spend it. Time is a finite resource and it’s important to be a bit selfish with regards to who you give that time to.”

You must protect your time as much as possible, including who you decide to give it to or with whom you spend it. Time is a finite resource and it’s important to be a bit selfish with regards to who you give that time to. You have to be decisive in this part of life, especially as you get older. While it’s important to spend time with family, friends, or acquaintances outside of work or business, you should also be intentional about who receives your time and energy.

Life is hard enough as it is on its own without other people adding to your stress. Some friction is inevitable in any friendship or relationship and it’s important to work through it as responsible adults. However, the difference in when knowing not to indulge them further or cut ties with them is if every interaction or meetup leaves you feeling emotionally taxed or if they didn’t bring any positive impact to you all getting together. This is especially important when you’re thinking about being friends or a romantic partner with someone long-term. You want to leave them feeling better than you did when you first saw them or began seeing each other. If every interaction with them consistently leaves you emotionally drained, frustrated, or questioning why you continue giving this person your time, that’s worth paying attention to and trusting your instincts about whether to keep seeing them or not.

You don’t want to use that person as an emotional punching bag either to vent or to complain but you should be able to express yourself freely without judgment or needing to mask your emotions. We each do that enough during the day with strangers, with work colleagues, or in general. You should be able to be vulnerable and true to heart with someone who can provide you peace by listening to you, giving you real feedback and advice, or just being there when you’re going through both good times and bad times.

Peace, however, doesn’t necessarily mean convenience. Someone can provide you with peace because they are agreeable and never challenge you, but that doesn’t necessarily make them a good friend or romantic partner. A healthy relationship isn’t one where you always agree or never frustrate one another. In fact, someone can occasionally frustrate you, challenge your thinking, or even disagree with you and still be an incredibly valuable person in your life. The difference is how you handle those disagreements and how you feel about the relationship’s progression overall.

It may be worth asking yourself three simple questions when thinking about keeping the relationship going or letting it end on a good note: Can I be myself around this person? Can we disagree without disrespecting one another? And after spending time with them consistently, do I generally feel better or worse? Your answers to those questions can tell you a great deal about whether a friendship or a relationship provides genuine peace or simply avoiding conflict.

If you find that you’re not really getting along well with them consistently, maybe either or both of you have changed since you first got together, it may be useful to evaluate whether it’s worth moving forward with them in the future. Friendships and relationships often have a beginning and an end due to several factors and it’s important to end things honestly and on a good note, if possible. Just because they don’t provide you with peace or comfort anymore doesn’t mean there have to be bitter feelings at the end of it for both parties.

The main thing to keep in mind is that each time you get together, you can be open and honest with them while not being combative, dismissive, or confrontational for no discernible reason. Peace and harmony in any relationship or friendship is absolutely the minimum you should strive for and when it’s constantly not like that regardless of the frequency of getting together, you may need to either limit the interactions with that person or cut them off entirely.

There’s an oft-used statement that’s used for adults in that you must be willing to ‘protect your peace’ because the mental strain and emotional toll a bad friendship or a toxic relationship can have on you is never worth it. Sometimes, you have to distance yourself from someone not to punish them, but because continuing the relationship is no longer healthy for you. Perhaps you can forgive them and go back to the way things were, but you must also be willing to move on and not indulge them further with your valuable time or presence. Protecting your peace isn’t about expecting every relationship to be easy; it’s about recognizing when maintaining a relationship has become more harmful than healthy.

As we get older, part of growing up is realizing that not every relationship or friendship is meant to last forever. Some people are meant to accompany us for a season, teach us something, share an experience with us, and eventually move on. There doesn’t have to be hatred or resentment involved on either side. Sometimes the healthiest thing you can do for yourself and ultimately for them is simply stop indulging in a relationship that no longer brings out the best in either of you.

Life’s Unlikely Cinematic Moments

“Every so often, without warning, life gives us something entirely different. It hands us a scene that could have come straight from a movie.”

Life certainly has its fair share of dreary or uninspiring moments like driving to work in heavy traffic, waiting in the doctor’s office for an appointment, or wandering down grocery store aisles searching for one specific item among hundreds of others. It’s easy to think that life is mostly made up of obligations, routines, and responsibilities. Every so often, without warning, life gives us something entirely different. It hands us a scene that could have come straight from a movie.

We spend so much of our lives chasing milestones: job promotions, weddings, vacations, birthdays, graduations, or other long-awaited accomplishments that we often overlook the quiet moments in between that are just as special. Ironically, those quieter scenes are often the ones that replay in our memory years later. They aren’t memorable because something extraordinary happened. They’re memorable because, for a moment, everything around us seemed perfectly composed, almost as if someone had carefully framed the world through a movie camera lens.

In these cinematic moments, nothing particularly significant happens that affects you deeply. There are no life-changing conversations or dramatic plot twists to go with this kind of cinematic moment. Instead, it simply feels as though everything is exactly as it should be. All your senses become heightened when this happens and you notice sounds that normally blend into the background, appreciate the way the light falls across a street or over a mountain, and become fully present rather than rushing toward whatever comes next.

One evening in Vancouver, Canada earlier this summer, I wandered into Richmond’s Chinese food district with no agenda beyond enjoying a late-evening snack at the Yaohan Centre and exploring the different vendor offerings. As the sun slowly sank toward the Pacific, the distant mountains caught the day’s final light, glowing softly against the evening sky. I stepped outside with a cigar I had purchased earlier in the trip, lit it, and settled in to enjoy it while watching the sunset. Above me, the SkyTrain thundered overhead every few minutes as aircraft lined up for takeoff and landing at Vancouver International Airport.

Between bites of dumplings, conversations in Mandarin and Cantonese drifted through the air as cars quietly came and went from the Centre’s parking lot. The city never stopped moving, but for ten minutes, I did. This moment felt less like traveling and more like standing inside a perfectly framed movie scene, where I was somehow both the audience and one of the characters. There was no grand event taking place or resolution occurring for me or anyone else at the time. Nothing about those minutes would have made the local news or anyone else’s travel itinerary. Yet it remains one of the moments I remember most vividly from my time spent in Vancouver.

Looking back, I’ve realized that these cinematic moments are different from life’s highlights. Highlights are the events we intentionally chase throughout our lives. We save money for them, put them on our calendars, and count down the days until they arrive. They are weddings, birthdays, promotions, championship games, graduation ceremonies, concerts, national parks, and bucket-list vacations. They’re often the moments we photograph the most and eagerly share with friends and family. Cinematic moments are something else entirely in life. They aren’t destinations but rather they’re scenes that we set for ourselves, intentionally or otherwise.

The coffee you grab before the concert, where you unexpectedly strike up a conversation and meet someone special, becomes more memorable than the concert itself. The quiet walk back to your hotel late at night, with the city lights guiding your way after visiting a famous landmark, stays with you longer than the attraction itself. The stranger you briefly talk to and instantly connect with on a train for hours telling each other your life story ends up becoming your favorite memory from the trip itself. They are unexpected gifts hidden within ordinary moments that quietly become extraordinary. Highlights tell the story of what we accomplished or where we went. Cinematic moments remind us how life felt along the way within our accomplishments.

The more I’ve traveled, the more I’ve noticed these moments appearing in places I never expected. Walking down a quiet street after an unexpected snowfall with no one else around except the sound of my boots pressing into fresh snow. Enjoying a coffee in a plaza in Medellín while teenagers laughed and shouted encouragement to one another during an impromptu soccer match. Sitting alone on a quiet stretch of beach in Ubatuba, Brazil, listening to nothing but the waves, the wind, and seabirds overhead. Watching the clouds briefly part at Mount Rainier just long enough to reveal the majestic summit before closing again. Even sitting in a busy airport terminal as travelers from every corner of the world cross paths beneath a glowing departure board can unexpectedly feel cinematic and has captivated my full attention many times over.

None of these moments were planned. None of them appeared on a trip itinerary. None of them could have been recreated if I had tried. I’ve come to realize that life’s most cinematic moments rarely announce themselves. They happen beneath train tracks, along airport approach paths, inside neighborhood cafés, on ferry rides, during aimless walks, and in places that most people pass through without a second thought. They last only five or ten minutes before disappearing forever. Perhaps that’s exactly what makes them so meaningful to experience and take note of.

We often measure our lives by the promotions earned, the money made, countries visited, races completed, or milestones reached. These life achievements deserve to be celebrated and remembered. However, I believe life is equally shaped by its quieter scenes, the moments when the lighting is right, the sounds around us blend, and the world briefly feels perfectly composed.

Those moments cannot be scheduled, purchased, or manufactured. Our only responsibility is to slow down enough to recognize them while we’re fortunate enough to still be standing inside the scene and remembering it later. After all, some of the greatest scenes in our lives will never make anyone else’s highlight reel. They’ll simply become part of our own lifelong soundtrack.

The Lost Skill of Making People Feel Seen

“Most people aren’t lonely because they lack friends, they’re lonely because nobody truly sees them. In a world of constant interactions, at work, online, or in our daily routines, these moments are often shallow, rushed, and forgettable.”

Most people aren’t lonely because they lack friends, they’re lonely because nobody truly sees them. In a world of constant interactions, at work, online, or in our daily routines, these moments are often shallow, rushed, and forgettable.

One of the best books I’ve read recently on this subject is from New York Times writer and columnist, David Brooks, who authored the book, ‘How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen’ in October 2023. The core idea of his book was that you can divide people into two camps of ‘Illuminators vs. Diminishers’, with illuminators making people feel recognized, clearer, more important, and the diminishers who make interactions about themselves or forget about the other person (often not on purpose). If attention is now the primary currency in our lives, giving or receiving quality attention is the key difference in seeing others fully.

Let’s go into what ‘feeling seen’ means in 2025 and what it doesn’t because it can get confusing if you’re new to this concept. Feeling seen is not about just agreeing with someone, praising them effusively, being ‘nice’ or ‘kind’, fixing their problems for them, dumping your own problems or inadequacies on them to compensate in return for them sharing their issues. Rather, feeling seen is about being perceived accurately and without judgment often, having your inner logic understood and how you see the world, and feeling that your emotions are being recognized rather than just analyzed and interpreted.

An example of this in action could be a friend, a spouse, or a co-worker telling you, “I don’t necessarily agree with you here, but I understand why that matters to you and I see your perspective.” Being able to let that person know that you know where they are coming from in their views and why it matters to them makes a huge difference in your personal and professional life.

Technological and other daily distractions aside, there are various reasons why people don’t feel fully seen nowadays. Most people are not patient in waiting for their turn to talk, rehearse their response in advance while you’re still speaking, filtering everything through themselves and what they would do, or just not wanting to understand when they listen. If you are not seeing someone enough, start with listening to understand the other person rather than listening to reply or putting themselves in their shoes right away. You cannot see someone else while you’re playing their role in your own mental movies or thinking through what you would do, say, or behave in their shoes.

Like any social skill, there are ways to make someone feel more seen and to build up that skill like it’s a positive habit. The more you use, repeat, and solidify these response tactics, the more comfortable other people will feel around you. First, listen to the emotion that they are carrying with their words even if they don’t express it outright. Train yourself to hear the ‘fear, anxiety, pride, shame, sadness, frustration, hope, joy, etc. that they exude with their cadence and tone beyond the words they are saying. Being able to voice what emotions they may be expressing to you in their words is very powerful and will make someone feel very seen. For example, “You sound disappointed, not angry, about ____.” As David Brooks wrote about ‘illuminators’, seeing people’s emotions clearly even if they aren’t telling you with their words what exactly they are feeling is a very useful people skill.

Second, I think it’s key to asking expanding questions, rather than extractive or basic ones. Good questions open doors to a deeper and more fulfilling conversation while bad questions can feel like an interview or an interrogation. A good question could be, “What part of your work gives you the most fulfillment?”, which can expand the conversation and take that person through a positive memory or a feeling of contentedness sharing what they do for a living in a specific way. Rather than an extractive question that may not lead anywhere that we often hear a lot as “So, what do you do?” If the question helps them understand better or explains why someone does what they do, you’re doing it the right way.

Additionally, some other ways to make others feel seen is to avoid pivoting to yourself right away. You should want to reflect on the conversation rather than redirect it to be about yourself or what you would do. For example, you could say “What I’m hearing from you is ____”, allowing that person to know that you were paying attention but also that you heard them correctly in terms of their viewpoint. Remember to ask questions that open the conversation, not trap it. Name specific strengths you notice. These small moves make someone feel truly seen. A friend once told me they felt burnt out by their job. In this case, just nodding back wasn’t enough, but I reflected on their frustrations with their work environment, and it completely shifted the conversation

Naming the strength(s) and good qualities of a person is also an excellent way to make them feel seen. Instead of calling someone you respect ‘smart, clever, hard-working’, go deeper than that by taking why you think they are that way and what it is specifically that led you to come to that conclusion about them. At a meeting once, instead of saying “Good point. I said, ‘I see why that approach would make sense given the constraints you’re dealing with.”

Lastly, people are unfinished characters meaning that they are complex, deep, and contradictory at times. Mr. Brooks’s book emphasizes the need to have a ‘moral imagination’ about someone to get beyond who you think they are just because you know their politics, childhood, job, worst moment(s). Assume in good faith that there is a lot more going on in a person’s life than you currently understand and try to hold judgment about them based just on the information that you have available about them.

Being seen by another person deeply is a great feeling and is increasingly rare these days. Seeing others requires courage, dedication, and attention, which is in short supply. The ability to see and be seen demands humility, slowing ourselves down, removing our ego armor, and being present with them fully. It is also worth noting that the people who feel most unseen by others end up being the worst at seeing others in response as it becomes a negative cycle. If you’re not seen at all or at least a little bit, why would you want to do the same for others rather than breaking the cycle?

Making others feel seen changes you for the better as a person. When you see others well, your relationships deepen, you become a better leader, your conflicts soften or end, and your own sense of personal meaning grows as a result. As Brooks writes in ‘How to Know a Person’, “To know other person well is one of the highest forms of love.” I think this is a great lesson worth imparting on us all to try to illuminate other people as often as people and to do so in a consistent manner. I’ve seen it personally in my classrooms, work meetings, or even casual coffee chats as people light up when someone hears them and not just nods along.

Try this once today: make someone feel truly understood. Watch what happens. Whether it’s a comment, a reflection, a thoughtful question, a moment of real attention without distraction, you can make a positive difference in that person’s life, especially if they are going through a tough time. You don’t need grand gestures, just presence, attention, and care. In a world obsessed with being seen, the rarest superpower is knowing how to see.

I’ll Take Kind Gestures Over Kind Words Any Day

“When was the last time someone let you merge into traffic or grabbed you a coffee without asking? Too long, right? Small gestures like these can make your day or even your week. We’re taught from a young age that kind words keep the world turning, but words are just the starting point.”

When was the last time someone let you merge into traffic or grabbed you a coffee without asking? Too long, right? Small gestures like these can make your day or even your week. We’re taught from a young age that kind words keep the world turning, but words are just the starting point.

Even rarer than kind words are kind actions. Post-COVID, people’s social skills have atrophied, making everyday courtesies harder to come by. Things like holding the door, walking on the right side of the sidewalk, or letting someone merge on the highway might seem small but they matter far more than words alone, and we could all use more of them.

Having these kinds of gestures be optional instead of compulsory represents an overall reflection of the fracturing of what used to be common courtesy along with the kind of bare minimum expectations we have of one another too often. Instead of kind gestures, we often have the opposite now: people being loud in public places, not using earphones or headphones on their meetings or in the music they listen to, or just not minding their body language or others’ personal space. I value the importance of these basic gestures because they take such little time or self-awareness yet have become harder to find even when I consider them to be increasingly important to societal harmony.

It’s one thing for strangers to abstain from kind gestures or words but it’s entirely another when they come from business associates, colleagues, family, or friends. Taking the initiative and building a two-sided friendship or relationship, professional or personal, doesn’t take much to sustain but it truly can make a world of difference to the other person(s). Such kind gestures mean more than the average word could ever and people really remember those sincere actions more than giving a basic compliment or heaping on effusive praise.

These kind gestures depend on the kind of relationship you have with the person or group in question, but sending business associates a holiday card or remembering their birthday can strengthen the relationship significantly. You could also offer to buy them coffee or tea for providing advice or mentorship with your work or business. With work colleagues, it doesn’t hurt to share your appreciation in giving a kind word for them, but it could mean much more to bring in food or drinks for lunch or help them with a problem they are having on a difficult project. If you’re a manager, kind words are nice to hear but recognizing your employees with a bonus, a promotion, or just an award or other kind of real recognition can make a huge difference with morale building or employee retention at your firm.

With one’s family and friends, it’s always important to say ‘please’, ‘thank you’ and show your appreciation for their presence in your life. However, it’s always better to take the initiative to ask them out for a dinner or a concert or just to give them a call consistently to check-in with them and see how they’re really doing. Keeping a friendship or family relationship in good shape is hard to do but at least making the effort to see each other and to do so in a two-way manner is key to keeping it sustainable.

Being complimentary, supportive, and positive are all great with your words but real actions or gestures will always speak loudest. That’s especially the case when you’ve known that person a long time and have a history together. Sometimes, friendships end out of nowhere and family bonds are breakable by one party or the other, but if you want to make a real effort, make sure to rely on kind gestures primarily because they mean a lot more to someone than your words.

These days, it’s hard to get kind words out of strangers or people you don’t know and even more so when it comes to expecting basic social graces or gestures of kindness. As a result, we are starved for those kinds of gestures and actions that are unprompted, considerate, and relevant to us. We need those friends, family, and even close associates doing kind things for us and for them to be reciprocated as well because it helps foster our happiness, joy, and overall life satisfaction more than we think.

Kindness begets kindness. While words can move the needle, gestures, actions, and time spent together make a world of difference. Remember: kind words are the minimum of a polite society but making kind gestures second nature to you, especially for the people in your orbit, will make your life richer and fuller. Tomorrow, remember to hold the door for someone, send that quick ‘thank you’ note if someone did something kind for you, or buy a mentor or a friend a cup of coffee. Small gestures always make a big impact, which makes life better for everyone.

Mi Sexto Conjunto de Poemas en Español (My Sixth Set of Spanish Poems)

My sixth set of Spanish poems focused on showing attention to your beloved, having a queen in your life, the fight of your life, dignity being everything, and escaping when it’s necessary.

  1. Óyeme bien

Óyeme bien
Óyeme bien, finalmente,
Estamos juntos de nuevo.
¿Qué puedo contarte todo de mi corazón?
Mis orejas podrán aguantar eso.
Sin ti, no tengo nadie a quien contar mis secretos.
Óyeme bien con tu voz bonita y fiel.

2. ¿Dónde está mi reina?

¿Dónde está mi reina?
Mi reina de mi corazón.
Ninguna persona es como mi reina.
Mi reina de mi felicidad.
Puedo luchar por mi reina para siempre.
Porque para mí, mi reina es todo el mundo.

3. La lucha de mi vida

La lucha de mi vida
¡Sube al ring,
Ponte los guantes!
Mantén la guardia alta,
Nunca temas el golpe.
La vida te golpeará duro,
¡Asegúrate de devolver el golpe con más fuerza!

4. ¡La dignidad lo es todo!

¡La dignidad lo es todo!
Respeta a la gente que trabaja,
Respeta a la gente que estudia,
Respeta a la gente que hace que la vida sea lo que es.
Todo trabajo tiene dignidad,
Toda persona tiene dignidad, igual.
No lo olvides ni por un minuto.

5. Afuera de aquí

Afuera de aquí
Ya no hay nada para nosotros.
Solo violencia, dolor y miseria aquí.
Recuerden lo que nos arrebataron a nosotros y a ustedes.
Almas atrapadas aquí para siempre, lastimosamente.
Aún tenemos una opción para sobrevivir y vivir.
Salgan de aquí ahora, antes de que sea demasiado tarde.

My Second Attempt at English Poetry (June 2025)

My second attempt at writing English poetry and covering different topics such as the open road, nature, love, summertime, and the stillness of life.

1. Silence on the Open Road in Iceland

No horns, no hurry, no traffic rush, just endless sky,
Lava fields hush as the glaciers sigh.
Each mile whispers what words cannot say,
The road and I just slip away.

2. The Peace and The Quiet

No noise, no news, no fuss,                                                                                                   only my breath and the calm breeze.
The world exhales at once,                                                                                                     putting me at ease.
In stillness, truth begins to speak,
The loudest peace is soft and sleek.

3. The Majesty of Nature

Snowcapped Mountain peaks glimmer far and wide,
Wild rivers roar and tumble with pride.
Bold explorers yearn for each high crest,
to leave a mark, and to pass the test.
Bow to the wind, the sky, the flame,
this wild world remembers your name.

4. Summer Breeze

My warm hands go across your soft skin,                                                                            a flirty tease, a calming sense of ease,
salt, sand, and sun felt in a lazy breeze.
Time forgets to check the clock,
Summer sighs and slips its lock.

5. My Blue-Eyed Baby

Your blue eyes flash, like a new day’s dawn,                                                                        Pure joy and glee I see, you could never do wrong.
One smile, the world turns sweet and slow,
you’ve got that magic, baby, don’t you know?

The Whiskey Philosopher

“In a year of ‘red lights’, it’s been both enlightening and refreshing to read a book by a man who has spent his first fifty years on the planet chasing ‘greenlights.’ That phrase of catching ‘greenlights’ is also the formal title of Matthew McConaughey’s memoir / autobiography / personal growth tale that quickly draws the reader in.”

In a year of ‘red lights’, it’s been both enlightening and refreshing to read a book by a man who has spent his first fifty years on the planet chasing ‘greenlights.’ That phrase of catching ‘greenlights’ is also the formal title of Matthew McConaughey’s memoir / autobiography / personal growth tale that quickly draws the reader in. I first heard about Mr. McConaughey’s book when he appeared on the ‘Joe Rogan Experience’, Joe Rogan’s popular podcast. Mr. Rogan coined the book as being ‘whiskey philosophy’ with McConaughey being the philosopher over a glass of whiskey.

I found this metaphor to be quite fitting for the book ‘greenlights’ as the author talks about his life foremost as an observer and a reflector who is able to take a step back and analyze his decisions, his perspectives, and his overall views on his life and how he got to be who he is today. You immediately feel comfortable with McConaughey’s narrative and his ability to tell stories like you were sitting with an old friend over a fire pit drinking whiskey and regaling each other with both good times and bad. Throughout the book, you feel welcomed in and embraced as if you were right there with Matthew having a chat.

What I do love most about ‘Greenlights’ is the raw honesty and the ability to peer into a life like his, which I would argue is different from your average celebrity. Instead of obsessing over the glitz and glamour of being famous in Hollywood, you spend more time with McConaughey in different places around the world. I, for one, did not know that he was an avid traveler ever since he took a gap year in high school to go to Australia on an exchange program. He has often felt the call to go out in the wild, to be secluded from others, and to meet new people along the way.

Surprisingly, the book takes us from the Chihuahua Desert of West Texas to the autobahns of Germany to the jungles of the Peruvian Amazon and across the ocean to the small villages of Mali. One story of Matthew’s that stood out in particular was his wrestling match with a local Malian villager who challenges him as the only white man who has shown up as a guest to wrestle together. It’s not clear to the reader who wins the match, but it doesn’t matter to the village who sees Matthew wrestle. What is most important to them is that he accepted the challenge and not about who won or who lost.

I find that this particular story resonates across Matthew’s life so far and his willingness to put himself out there. Whether it’s going up to ask the woman he eventually marries if he can make her a margarita to seeking his permission from his father to go into acting as long as he doesn’t ‘half-ass it’ to keeping his promise to become a father because that was the most important thing for him to do in life, McConaughey is always willing to accept a challenge and embrace the possibility of failure. His ten guiding goals of what he wanted out of his life back in 1992 when he begun to keep a journal and of which he details in the book of what they were shows the readers how he may have taken a few detours but was able to stay true to his values and his desires even though he’s still working on a few of them.

His main goals of being a father, meeting the woman who was best for him on Earth, putting family first, and even winning a Best Actor award did not happen automatically and he had to run through a number of ‘red lights’ in order to get his ‘greenlights’ eventually. While ‘red lights’ would dissuade a lot of people to keep pushing such as being placed in romcoms for over ten years like Matthew was or perhaps having a falling out with his mother due to his having children out of wedlock, these ‘red lights’ did not discourage him from staying committed to who he was as an actor and as a person.

I think the main message of ‘greenlights’ is to not let the inevitable ‘red lights’ stop you from pursuing your goals and once you see an opportunity, you have to run with it and work hard to turn those lights green. Another particular example from the book that stood out to me was Matthew’s insight to playing Ron Woodroof in the acclaimed film, ‘Dallas Buyers Club’, an immensely emotional role, which led McConaughey to win the Best Actor award for his performance. The role itself wasn’t probably the highest paying role for an actor nor was it going to be a huge box office hit like his previous romcoms.

I believe Matthew took the role because how moving the personal story of Woodroof was and how he was moved to tears talking to Ron’s family and learning about his life through Ron’s own personal journals. While the actor and the man portrayed are very different, they are both native Texans and avid journal keepers. Matthew details his intense diet of losing up to 50 pounds to play the role in the movie and how he had to put himself in the mind of a man quietly dying from the horrific AIDS virus, which was stigmatized at the time. Even if they had to do the film over-budget, it was being made because Matthew, like all good actors, knows a good passion project when he finds one and puts all of his effort into acting the role to make the film as good as it can be. In this case, he won the Best Actor award and made his father proud who tells him the book to not ‘half-ass it’ and those words of encouragement stuck with Matthew.

In addition to seeing Matthew’s life play out since he was a child growing up in Texas, you get to see his really well-written poems, notes, anecdotes, and short stories, which really do convey an intuitive wisdom to them. From discussing love to pleasure to pain to truth to meaning, these poems scattered throughout the book are refreshing to read and relate to his life as a whole. His scribbles, notes, and recollection of different events in life is quite impressive. I do believe even more so after reading ‘Greenlights’ how I should start keeping my own journal for the long-term. Matthew was successfully able to turn his journal full of notes, memories, poems, and stories in a really good book about self-discovery, personal growth, the stages of life from childhood through adulthood, and one’s journey in seeking out ‘greenlights’ even when they can be few and far between as they have been for many of us throughout 2020.

At 285 pages, this is a great memoir and autobiography that doesn’t feel like its length. It is very much an easy page turner that doesn’t feel forced or slow-going. It really grips you for the ride and McConaughey’s life has been full of adventures, events, and precious memories up to year 50 where the book concludes. My only suggestion for improving the book or adding on to it in the future is to really focus more on the ‘red lights’ that happened in the author’s life and what specifically did he learn from those lean times as someone struggling as an actor or having family troubles or being tired of singledom.

I would be curious to learn more from Matthew about what advice he would give to someone during those ‘red lights’ times and how to make the most of them or how to best turn them green in the future. I did find that part to be missing from ‘Greenlights’ a bit too much as the ‘greenlights’ got a lot of the book space whereas I think it’s the ‘red lights’ in life that cause us to reflect more, learn more about who we are, and challenge us to be more creative in overcoming adversity.

In conclusion, ‘Greenlights’ by Matthew McConaughey is one of the best books of 2020. It is an engaging, emotional, and insightful look into a man’s life who has been one of the most important actors and entertainers of the past few decades. You learn a lot more about who Matthew is, what drives him, what’s important to him, how he views family, friends, his career, and what truly matters in life. I enjoy his whiskey philosophy and if I happened to be hanging out in Texas with anyone such as having a stiff drink and swapping stories together, it would be with Matthew McConaughey.