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The house is quiet now. There’s the low hum of the dishwasher and the soft thud of our old dog settling onto the rug in the hallway. My tea is getting cold on the counter, next to a small, colorful pile of Lego bricks I missed during cleanup. It’s in these quiet moments, after the stories have been read and the last drinks of water delivered, that the day really settles in my mind.
My son came home from school today with a story. It was a classic schoolyard tale—who pushed who on the playground, what someone’s mom packed them for lunch, a secret whispered from one friend to another. He told it with wide, serious eyes, feeling the weight of this information he was carrying. We talked about it for a bit. About how stories can feel heavy. About how they can be true, or a little bit true, or not true at all. We talked about what it feels like to be on the inside of a story, and what it feels like to be on the outside, looking in.
Later, after he was asleep, I found myself scrolling on my phone, the way you do. And there it was—a different kind of story. A headline from a site like tmz, with a picture of someone I’ve never met, on what looked like one of the worst days of their life. It was all there, for anyone to see. A personal, painful moment packaged as news, as entertainment.
I clicked off the phone and looked around the quiet room. At the little life we’ve built, full of its own small, important stories. It made me think about the distance between the whispers on the playground and the bright glare of a headline. It’s all just stories about people, isn’t it? And it feels like somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten how to carry them with care.
There’s a strange intimacy to knowing the details of a stranger’s heartbreak, but it’s a cold kind of closeness. It doesn’t ask anything of us. It doesn’t require our empathy or our kindness, only our attention. And I wonder what that does to our hearts over time. I wonder if it makes it harder to hold space for the real, messy, complicated stories of the people right in front of us. 🧸
I don’t have an answer. It’s just a thought, caught here in the late-night quiet. A question about how we show up for each other, in the stories we tell and the ones we choose to consume.
What does it mean to be a good human, a kind neighbor, in a world that sells tickets to other people’s pain?
My son came home from school today with a story. It was a classic schoolyard tale—who pushed who on the playground, what someone’s mom packed them for lunch, a secret whispered from one friend to another. He told it with wide, serious eyes, feeling the weight of this information he was carrying. We talked about it for a bit. About how stories can feel heavy. About how they can be true, or a little bit true, or not true at all. We talked about what it feels like to be on the inside of a story, and what it feels like to be on the outside, looking in.
Later, after he was asleep, I found myself scrolling on my phone, the way you do. And there it was—a different kind of story. A headline from a site like tmz, with a picture of someone I’ve never met, on what looked like one of the worst days of their life. It was all there, for anyone to see. A personal, painful moment packaged as news, as entertainment.
I clicked off the phone and looked around the quiet room. At the little life we’ve built, full of its own small, important stories. It made me think about the distance between the whispers on the playground and the bright glare of a headline. It’s all just stories about people, isn’t it? And it feels like somewhere along the way, we’ve forgotten how to carry them with care.
There’s a strange intimacy to knowing the details of a stranger’s heartbreak, but it’s a cold kind of closeness. It doesn’t ask anything of us. It doesn’t require our empathy or our kindness, only our attention. And I wonder what that does to our hearts over time. I wonder if it makes it harder to hold space for the real, messy, complicated stories of the people right in front of us. 🧸
I don’t have an answer. It’s just a thought, caught here in the late-night quiet. A question about how we show up for each other, in the stories we tell and the ones we choose to consume.
What does it mean to be a good human, a kind neighbor, in a world that sells tickets to other people’s pain?
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