Dear Givers

Phonics empowers rural Chinese students by helping to place them on a more equal footing with their urban counterparts, while also equipping them with skills that can support future success. It is important to recognise the persistent education gap between rural and urban areas in China.

Urban students often benefit from higher-quality teachers, stronger academic programmes, and broader access to educational resources. In addition, rural Chinese families frequently face lower incomes and heavier economic burdens. In some rural areas, dropout rates have reportedly reached 40%. Against this backdrop, phonics and English instruction offer students transferable, lifelong skills that can improve opportunity and help break cycles of disadvantage and poverty.

The I Love Learning Education Centre in Liaoning, China, has been using phonics to build literacy skills among rural Chinese students. The core focus of the programme is to teach students the relationship between letters and sounds, with particular emphasis on decoding for reading and encoding for writing.

When teaching newcomer rural Chinese students, experts at the school begin with CVC words in the following way:

1. Introduce the letters s, a, t, n, i, p.

2. Teach the corresponding sound for each letter. For example, s represents the sound /s/.

3. Once students are familiar with the letters and sounds, they are ready to begin decoding. Teachers then use a CVC word flip chart to practise decoding. For example:

Decoding

Step 1

Teacher and Students: “s is /s/, a is /æ/, t is /t/.”

Step 2

Teacher and Students: “/s/ /æ/ /t/”

Step 3

Teacher and Students: “/sæt/”

Step 4

Flip the letters on the Flip Chart and have the class, groups, or individuals repeat the above cycle with the teacher gradually reducing the level of scaffolding.

In this way, students learn to move from recognising individual letter sounds to blending them together to read words accurately and confidently. This method helps build a strong foundation in early literacy and gives students the confidence to begin reading independently.

We are deeply thankful for your support, because without it, implementing such a life-changing phonics programme would not be possible. Your contributions help us recruit quality teachers and design and deliver an effective phonics programme for the children of rural China.

Act now and help give 1000 rural Chinese children a quality English education.

Sources

Analyzing the Education Gap Between Rural and Urban Environments in China

Sapporo. Fin d’hiver. Yasuha dans l’air. Recouvrement.

On lui a dit que ce n’était pas un oubli.

La neige ne tombe pas vraiment ; elle s’accumule, lentement, comme si l’air s’était épaissi au point de la retenir un instant avant de la laisser descendre. Elle adoucit les contours sans les effacer, recouvre sans rien résoudre.

Satoshi marche sans se presser. Non pas parce qu’il a du temps, mais parce qu’il n’y a aucun avantage à laisser penser qu’il en manque. La rue est calme, de ce calme que l’hiver impose ; non pas le silence, mais une retenue, comme si le son lui-même préférait ne pas aller trop loin.

Le bâtiment est là où il doit être, et pourtant légèrement en retrait – un décalage trop précis pour être accidentel, trop discret pour être architectural. Un de ces lieux qui n’insistent pas pour être vus, mais qui ne disparaissent pas non plus.

Une lumière à l’étage. Chaleureuse, au premier regard. Puis, après un instant, simplement constante. Sans variation. Comme si rien à l’intérieur n’exigeait d’ajustement.

Il s’arrête de l’autre côté de la rue. Il attend. Non pas un signal. L’absence de signal.

Quelque part au-dessus, une télévision. Des rires... courts, maîtrisés, répétés. Ils atteignent la façade… mais pas vraiment le trottoir. Comme interceptés.

Il traverse.

L’entrée cède sans résistance. Ouverte, ou bien ayant cessé de vouloir être fermée. À l’intérieur, l’air est plus chaud. Mais pas accueillant. Un air qui n’a pas été interrompu depuis un moment.

Près du mur, des chaussures. Alignées avec précision. Une paire manque. Et pourtant, l’absence ne dérange pas l’ensemble. Elle l’achève.

Il n’appelle pas.

Le couloir se resserre en s’éloignant, ou peut-être en donne-t-il seulement l’impression, une fois qu’on y entre ? Les distances ici semblent moins fixes qu’elles ne devraient.

Une porte, devant. Entrouverte.

Il marque une pause. Pas par doute. Pour s’ajuster – laisser l’espace devenir lisible.

À l’intérieur, sur une table basse : la montre.

Elle a été posée là. Délibérément. Pas oubliée. Pas tombée. Placée. Comme on laisse une réponse, plutôt qu’un objet.

Il entre.

Rien ne semble déplacé. Rien n’indique un départ non plus. La pièce se tient dans une continuité suspendue, comme si ce qui s’y est produit n’avait pas encore décidé d’appartenir au passé.

L’aiguille s’est arrêtée. Ou bien elle continue, mais selon une mesure qu’il ne peut plus suivre.

Il la prend.

Froide. Plus froide que la pièce ne l’autorise.

Plus loin, dans l’appartement... quelque chose. Un son, peut-être. Ou l’idée d’un son. Pas un mouvement. Pas une absence non plus. Quelque chose qui ne va pas jusqu’au bout de lui-même.

Il attend.

Rien ne se résout.

Il se tourne.

Le couloir est plus long, maintenant. À peine – mais assez pour que cela compte.

Dehors, la neige a déjà recouvert ses traces. Entièrement.

Il ne se retourne pas.

#citypunk #satoshi

On confond souvent deux états qui n’ont rien à voir. Être seul et être isolé. Être seul peut être simple, parfois même reposant. L’isolement, lui, est un mécanisme. Il peut fonctionner au milieu des autres, dans une vie pleine, active, entourée. Ce n’est pas l’absence de relations qui crée la solitude réelle, c’est l’absence de circulation entre ce qui est à l’intérieur et ce qui peut être partagé à l’extérieur. Quand ce qui est vivant en soi n’a pas trouvé d’endroit pour exister, il ne disparaît pas. Il reste là, actif, mais coupé.

Ce qui reste ainsi devient une dette qui s’installe dans le corps. Pas une dette morale, une dette fonctionnelle. Quelque chose qui n’a pas été accueilli, entendu, intégré. Une expérience non digérée. Et cette dette organise la suite. Elle filtre les liens, elle déforme l’écoute, elle introduit une attente. Pas toujours visible, souvent implicite, mais constante. On n’entre plus en relation librement, on entre avec quelque chose à résoudre. Et tant que cette dette reste centrale, le lien ne peut pas être stable.

À partir de là, beaucoup de comportements prennent une autre fonction. Pas forcément des addictions au sens strict, mais des réponses. Des manières de réguler ce qui ne l’est pas à l’intérieur. Le travail, les loisirs, le sexe, les écrans, la validation, même certaines formes de compréhension ou de quête de sens. Tout peut devenir un moyen d’éviter le contact direct avec cette dette. Ce n’est pas absurde, c’est efficace à court terme. Ça permet de tenir, de fonctionner, de maintenir une cohérence minimale. Mais ça ne règle rien. Ça contourne.

Le problème n’est pas ce que l’on fait, c’est pourquoi on le fait. Quand l’extérieur sert principalement à payer pour l’intérieur, le lien devient instrumentalisé. L’autre n’est plus seulement là, il devient porteur d’une fonction. Quelqu’un qui doit apporter, sécuriser, réparer. Et même si ce n’est jamais formulé, cela s’impose dans la relation. Il y a une pression, une attente, une forme de contrainte.

C’est exactement là que les liens se déséquilibrent. Parce qu’un lien sous contrainte ne peut pas être libre. Il devient instable ou artificiel. L’autre s’adapte, résiste, se retire ou entre dans le jeu. Mais dans tous les cas, la relation ne repose plus sur une rencontre réelle. Elle repose sur une tentative de résolution.

Sortir de cette logique ne passe pas par plus d’isolement. Ce n’est pas en se coupant du monde que le mécanisme s’arrête. Il continue, simplement sans interlocuteur. Et dans cet isolement, la dette ne reste pas stable. Elle s’amplifie. Elle prend plus de place, elle se renforce, elle s’étend à d’autres zones de la vie. Ce qui était local devient global. Progressivement, elle infiltre la manière de penser, de ressentir, de réagir. La sensibilité augmente, mais de manière désorganisée. On devient plus réactif, plus irritable, parfois sans comprendre pourquoi. Les seuils baissent. Ce qui passait avant devient difficile. Et comme il n’y a pas de regard extérieur pour contenir ou ajuster, le système se referme encore plus.

À force, cette organisation finit par ressembler à une identité. On croit que c’est “soi”. On se décrit comme quelqu’un de nerveux, d’exigeant, de distant, d’intense, de fragile, peu importe les mots. Mais ce n’est pas une structure stable, c’est une adaptation. Un ensemble de réactions construites autour de cette dette qui grandit. Plus elle grandit, plus elle impose ses règles. Et plus elle impose ses règles, plus le lien devient difficile.

Sortir de là ne passe pas par supprimer les comportements ni par forcer des relations. Ce qui change la structure, c’est la capacité à laisser exister ce qui est à l’intérieur sans le transformer immédiatement en action extérieure. Sentir une tension sans chercher à la combler. Laisser une insécurité être là sans la projeter sur quelqu’un. Ne pas fuir systématiquement.

C’est discret, mais c’est central. Parce que tant que chaque mouvement interne déclenche une réponse externe, le système reste dépendant. Il ne peut pas s’ajuster autrement. Quand cette capacité apparaît, même partiellement, la dette commence à perdre sa position dominante. Elle ne disparaît pas, mais elle ne pilote plus.

Et c’est là que les liens deviennent sains. Pas parfaits, pas sans émotions, pas sans tensions. Sains dans leur structure. Parce qu’ils ne sont plus construits pour combler quelque chose. Il n’y a plus de dette à faire payer à l’autre. Il n’y a plus cette attente implicite qui transforme la relation en solution.

Cette règle est la même partout. Dans une relation amoureuse, avec un enfant, un ami, un collègue ou un voisin. Ce qui change, c’est le degré d’intimité, le contexte, la fréquence. Mais la nature du lien ne change pas. Un lien sain n’est pas défini par son intensité ni par sa profondeur apparente. Il est défini par l’absence de contrainte interne imposée à l’autre.

Dans un couple, cela veut dire que l’autre n’est pas responsable de ton équilibre. Tu peux aimer, t’attacher, t’engager, sans que ce soit une condition pour aller bien. Avec un enfant, cela signifie qu’il n’a rien à porter qui ne lui appartient pas. Il n’a pas à comprendre, réparer ou contenir l’adulte. Le lien devient un espace de sécurité, pas une charge. Avec les autres, même dans des liens simples, cela se traduit par moins de projection, moins d’attente implicite, plus de justesse.

Chacun reste à son niveau, avec sa manière d’être, sa capacité relationnelle. Certains vont vers plus de proximité, d’autres vers plus de distance. Certains parlent facilement, d’autres moins. Cela ne change rien à la structure du lien. Ce qui compte, c’est qu’il ne soit pas utilisé pour résoudre ce qui n’a pas été traité ailleurs.

À partir de là, quelque chose se simplifie. Le lien redevient un espace de rencontre, pas un espace de réparation. L’autre n’est plus une fonction. Il est une présence. Et dans cette présence, il y a moins de stratégie, moins de contrôle, moins de peur de perdre. C’est progressif comme sentiment, mais ça résonne fort.

C’est aussi là que disparaît cette forme particulière de solitude. Celle où l’on est entouré mais coupé. Parce que ce n’était pas le manque de relations qui créait cette sensation, mais l’impossibilité d’être en lien sans dette.

Quand ce qui est en soi peut exister sans être imposé à l’autre, et que l’autre n’a pas à le porter, mais peut l’accueillir dans cet espace du lien, alors quelque chose circule. Et ce qui circule, c’est précisément ce qui manquait.

There was blood in the sky; full moon shone strongly with red, and the night sky: purple

Beautiful and ominous

And today it’s snowing

This snow will not make it, it does not belong

But still it does, it is expected. There always will be snow and frost in spring

Because we are in a transformative phase right now.

And in this snow, I saw some buds or whatever on the trees outside.

There were snow flakes on some of them.

I shouldn’t have moved back here. History it’s repeating itself: I become fat and miserable,

Again

I have no future here.

Again

But I have opened my extra eyes now. Maybe I needed to go through this as part of my special personal journey

But that sounds like I’m reading meaning into things where there is none

A survival strategy.

受動的な人間、というものがいる。 命令されたり質問されたりすれば答えられるが、自分から能動的に何かを言うことはない。 俺自身もどちらかといえばそちら側で、その自覚があるぶん、逆にその意識がトリガーになって、たまに能動的に喋ることがある。 ただし、それは人と喋りたいからではない。

仕事をしていると、よく分かる。 よく喋る人と、ほとんど喋らない人がいる。 喋る人は仕事を前に進める。 喋らない人は技術がある。 喋らない人は、いわゆる受動的なタイプで、命令されればそれを遂行する。 たとえ理不尽な命令でも、技術を求められる以上、それをやり遂げる。

つまり、命令、インプットさえあれば動く人間がいる。 だが、それは彼らが「やりたいこと」ではない。 命令を実行することと、彼らの願望はまったく別だ。 それでも彼らは、自分の願望を能動的に語ることはない。

ここで、会社の経営者クラスに聞いてみたい。 彼らに命令するという行為は、彼らのやりたいことを叶えているのではなく、インプットがあれば動く、という習性を利用しているだけではないのか。 本当に彼らの幸せを考えているのか。 その中には、能動的に行動できるようになりたいと密かに願っている人間が、一定数いるような気がしてならない。

能動的に行動できた経験は、自分への自信になる。 良い上司というのは、こちらにある程度長めのプロジェクトを、絶妙な塩梅で渡してくる人だ。 段階を踏んで任せてくれることで、こちらは「自分が能動的に動けている」と錯覚する。 だが実際には、上司の巧みな采配によって、気づかないうちに能動性を引き出されているだけだったりする。 そんな上司には、なかなか出会えない。

だから思う。 弱い人間、もうあえてそう呼ぶが、そういう人間を雇う仕組みの会社を作るなら、 その弱い人間の心を満たす精神的なインフラを、ちゃんと用意しているのか、と。

これを聞いて、 「そんなもの必要ない。自分で成長して強くなればいい。甘えるな」 と思う人もいるだろう。 だが、俺の要求はそんな単純な話ではない。 俺は弱いままで、心が満たされたいのだ。 弱いまま幸せな人が増えるほど、人類が幸せになるのだ。

強くなることで失われるものが多すぎる。 繊細な感性、好きな音楽、好きな映画、好きな喫茶店。弱い心。そういうものが鈍ってしまったらどうする。 大人になった今でも、それだけは捨てたくない。

弱い人間に対する雇用は、昔より増えていると思う。 とりあえず働こうと思えば、コンビニでもどこでも働ける。 その仕組みはもうずっと前に整備されているはずだ。 弱い人間の存在を知りながら、なぜ彼らに能動性を与えるインフラを整えないのか。 経営者は賢いのだから、当然気づいているはずだ。 なのに、なぜ見て見ぬふりをするのか。

このテーマについて、いつか強い人間と話し合ってみたい。

No sé si es una calumnia o si se trata de un malentendido. Quiero pensar en esto último, porque tú eres, o has sido, mi mejor amigo por muchos años, e incluso pudimos haber sido parientes, pues sabes lo que quise a tu hermana, aunque ella no me hizo caso. Por eso digo muchos años, pues habíamos cumplido doce cuando nos conocimos, en la misma bolera donde te vi días más tarde. Imagínate cuánto tiempo.

Bolos, yo jugaba poco, pero lo intenté para caerle bien a ella. Mi problema era cuando había que derribar los bolos que quedaban de pie después del primer lanzamiento, entonces pensaba que tu hermana me estaba mirando, me llenaba de nervios y al lanzar la bola reventaba en la pista y se iba al canal. Cómo crees que me iba a querer, si a fin de cuentas yo era un patoso, por decir lo menos.

Pero eso no te da derecho a decir lo que ha llegado a mis oídos. Otra cosa. Tú sabes que yo sería incapaz de decir algo mal de tí aunque fuera cierto. Y aunque me digas que no fuiste tú, a quién le creo, entonces…

-Gustavo, por favor, sea lo que sea, perdóname y vuelve a la acera, porque ya ves, estoy de servicio dirigiendo el tráfico.

My hand somewhat got forced today, and we ended up calling for ~4 hours. I'm just being use voice to text and I don't care about correcting anything who gives a shit anymore honestly. In a way I feel like it's almost poetic using such a scuffed method of input in this sense and not correcting it, because I think it kind of just aligns with that feeling of how I can have some thought in my head when I try to express it when I try to put into words it's just an approximation of what I feel and I think that's part of the human condition of trying to figure out how to put your words to the thoughts in your mind. Unfortunately she said she was not emotionally available and she was not in a place where she could say yes to a date. And she also showered me an incredibly sweet things. Unprompted she told me how she finds me incredibly attractive both physically and personality wise, And she told me she found my profile attractive, my lips attractive, my hair and my voice. And it's kind of funny because I don't like those things too much. And it's really weird for someone to see those things in you and like those. I really don't like the way my voice sounds and it's something I've come to I think tolerate but never really like. I don't really like the way I laugh either, but I do like the fact that I do laugh so brazenly. There were so many things that we talked about and unfortunately we are incredibly compatible in certain aspects. And the things that I told myself that 0 at least she probably doesn't match me in, she matched me beyond what I could have expected. But at the same time we both acknowled it's a situation neither of us wants where it's her just saying wait for me. And I don't want to be a situation ship but it sucks because I really do like her. But at the same time it's not even that she's doing anything wrong, arguably I would say that she's doing something probably better than I am here. She got out of her relationship a little bit over a month ago and she just lost her dog this week. She said that I've been a source of comfort for her and she really enjoys my company a lot and she doesn't want to lose that. But at the same time it wouldn't be healthy and she currently doesn't have that emotional capacity 'cause she's dealing with all these other emotions and she wants to take some time after her breakup to be able to come back to herself and find that person before jumping into something else head first period And that's beyond fair, and I don't think that I'm necessarily unhealthy, I think been able to process a lot of the things from the breakup and Boo move on from them And so I don't blame her and it's kind of funny because we're both very similar people in that sense but at the same time I don't want to be let on and so I guess we've hit this weird little middle place where we both want to keep talking with each other but at the same time for an indefinite amount of time her answer is a no. And of course there's a chance that she changes her mind at some point and feels ready or something like that, but I can never wait for that and I can't just hold out on that hope. But I also don't want to give up the opportunity if I'm being fully honest. One thing that does suck is even though her parents are divorced both of them are incredibly supportive and Loving towards her. And unintentionally she sometimes kind of brags about it in a way. And it's never something that she even thinks that she's bragging about more just being grateful for, Similar to how I am grateful for a lot of the privilege that I have. But It does leave me with this pain in my chest when I think about how fortunate she is to have parents like that. And she told me at one point when she was venting about how some of her friends said that her parents would fly over when they would go through something like a breakup and she thought about how her parents never did that, and when she talked to her parents her parents said they didn't do it not because it was unreasonable but because they thought she wanted her space. My freshman year I tried to kill myself and I didn't even tell my parents. And I know they would have came but at the same time it would've just made it worse and what the fuck was my dad supposed to do. And I feel like I have half of those options of being able to ask my dad to come but for fucking what reason, He loves me but not in a way that is really clear. And he's not even comfortable with things like hugs and stuff like that and so there's a limit to really what I can receive. And so I do feel a little bit envious the people have such the fucking luck to be able to feel sad about not having that due to a misunderstanding. And it sucks because I think she's such a beautiful and fascinating person, But I want except the fact that it truly may not ever happen. And I think it's almost divine intervention in a couple of different ways, with how there are so many different little things that were so incredibly perfect with their juxtaposition or their timing. Additionally I remember I told her how a big thing I wanted to teach myself was to not convince someone to want to be with you and listen to their words. And so today she told me that she's not ready to date or anything like that, and so I had to listen to myself and I had to try to not convince her which is kind of painful. It's like seeing something slowly start to slip away from your hands and fully just taking your hands off of it and letting it go away. And it feels like there's such a small little bit of friction that you could add to keep that there because it does feel like she really does like me and I do like her a lot. But I'm letting myself correct my own brain chemicals by accepting the fact that just like that it could be gone And it's just like that. And it was nice and I think I do have a lot of gratitude for the fact that I recognize fast it was for me to find someone that was so incredibly wonderful and checked a lot of my boxes. And yes this might have been somewhat of a fluke but it very much shows me that there are people like this out there. I think she's pretty emotionally mature from everything I've seen, she's successful, I think she's very kind, and I think we're very compatible. And if it's happened like this it can happen again. If I really think about it I've honestly been in relationships more than I haven't I feel like for the last year or so. And at the end of the day I'm really grateful for the experience and I feel like I just fucking say that every single time and it's like a default response at this point but I guess I am grateful but at the same time fuck off.

Sapporo. Fin d’hiver. Yasuha dans l’air. Recouvrement.

On lui a dit que ce n’était pas un oubli.

La neige ne tombe pas vraiment ; elle s’accumule, lentement, comme si l’air s’était épaissi au point de la retenir un instant avant de la laisser descendre. Elle adoucit les contours sans les effacer, recouvre sans rien résoudre.

Satoshi marche sans se presser. Non pas parce qu’il a du temps, mais parce qu’il n’y a aucun avantage à laisser penser qu’il en manque. La rue est calme, de ce calme que l’hiver impose ; non pas le silence, mais une retenue, comme si le son lui-même préférait ne pas aller trop loin.

Le bâtiment est là où il doit être, et pourtant légèrement en retrait – un décalage trop précis pour être accidentel, trop discret pour être architectural. Un de ces lieux qui n’insistent pas pour être vus, mais qui ne disparaissent pas non plus.

Une lumière à l’étage. Chaleureuse, au premier regard. Puis, après un instant, simplement constante. Sans variation. Comme si rien à l’intérieur n’exigeait d’ajustement.

Il s’arrête de l’autre côté de la rue. Il attend. Non pas un signal. L’absence de signal.

Quelque part au-dessus, une télévision. Des rires... courts, maîtrisés, répétés. Ils atteignent la façade… mais pas vraiment le trottoir. Comme interceptés.

Il traverse.

L’entrée cède sans résistance. Ouverte, ou bien ayant cessé de vouloir être fermée. À l’intérieur, l’air est plus chaud. Mais pas accueillant. Un air qui n’a pas été interrompu depuis un moment.

Près du mur, des chaussures. Alignées avec précision. Une paire manque. Et pourtant, l’absence ne dérange pas l’ensemble. Elle l’achève.

Il n’appelle pas.

Le couloir se resserre en s’éloignant, ou peut-être en donne-t-il seulement l’impression, une fois qu’on y entre ? Les distances ici semblent moins fixes qu’elles ne devraient.

Une porte, devant. Entrouverte.

Il marque une pause. Pas par doute. Pour s’ajuster – laisser l’espace devenir lisible.

À l’intérieur, sur une table basse : la montre.

Elle a été posée là. Délibérément. Pas oubliée. Pas tombée. Placée. Comme on laisse une réponse, plutôt qu’un objet.

Il entre.

Rien ne semble déplacé. Rien n’indique un départ non plus. La pièce se tient dans une continuité suspendue, comme si ce qui s’y est produit n’avait pas encore décidé d’appartenir au passé.

L’aiguille s’est arrêtée. Ou bien elle continue, mais selon une mesure qu’il ne peut plus suivre.

Il la prend.

Froide. Plus froide que la pièce ne l’autorise.

Plus loin, dans l’appartement... quelque chose. Un son, peut-être. Ou l’idée d’un son. Pas un mouvement. Pas une absence non plus. Quelque chose qui ne va pas jusqu’au bout de lui-même.

Il attend.

Rien ne se résout.

Il se tourne.

Le couloir est plus long, maintenant. À peine – mais assez pour que cela compte.

Dehors, la neige a déjà recouvert ses traces. Entièrement.

Il ne se retourne pas.

#citypunk #satoshi

Fifteen years ago, if you were early to meet a friend, you'd just sit there. Watch people, daydream, or maybe stare at a wall.

Now you'd never even consider it. Your phone is out before you've sat down.

The disappearing in-between

It happens everywhere now. On the metro, in queues, at restaurants, at family dinners. A room full of people, all somewhere else. And this isn't generational anymore. It cuts across age groups. Everyone's in the same loop.

I catch myself less now, but I'm not immune. The instinct to fill every quiet moment with a screen is deep. It's muscle memory at this point.

Those in-between moments used to look different. People daydreamed. They looked out of bus windows. They struck up awkward conversations with strangers. They noticed things, a kid doing something funny, a weird shop name, a dog sleeping in the middle of the road, and it would put a small, private smile on their face.

These moments are small, but they connect you to the world around you in a way that no reel ever can.

We've traded all of that for a feed we won't remember by tomorrow.

It's not your fault (mostly)

Here's the thing most people don't realize: this isn't just a willpower problem. Your phone is engineered to be hard to put down.

Tristan Harris, a former design ethicist at Google who went on to co-found the Center for Humane Technology, has compared smartphones to slot machines. Every time you pull down to refresh a feed, you're pulling a lever.

Maybe something interesting shows up. Maybe it doesn't.

That uncertainty is what keeps you going. It's the same psychological mechanism, called variable-ratio reinforcement, that makes gambling addictive.

Then there's infinite scroll, which was invented in 2006 by a designer named Aza Raskin.

His intent was simple: make browsing more seamless. But the feature removed every natural stopping point.

There's no bottom of the page. No moment where your brain gets a chance to ask, “do I actually want to keep going?”

Raskin has since expressed deep regret about his creation, estimating that infinite scrolling wastes roughly 200,000 human lifetimes per day.

Read that number again. 200,000 human lifetimes. Per day.

And it goes deeper than design tricks. Research from Stanford's addiction medicine clinic has found that smartphone use activates the same dopamine reward pathways as addictive substances.

Every notification, every new post, every like triggers a small hit of dopamine, enough to keep you coming back but never enough to feel satisfied.

As psychiatrist Anna Lembke puts it, with repeated use, the brain adapts by dialing down its own dopamine production.

Eventually, you're not reaching for your phone because it feels good. You're reaching for it to stop feeling bad.

The apps aren't designed to serve you. They're designed to keep you.

Three hours I didn't know I was losing

I quit Instagram a few years ago, around the time COVID hit. It wasn't a sudden decision. The thought had been sitting at the back of my head for a while. I started small, a digital detox over a weekend, then another one. Eventually, I just stopped going back.

When I looked at my screen time, the number that stared back at me was close to three hours a day. Three hours. That's almost an entire afternoon, every single day, gone to a feed.

When I finally stopped, my days felt longer. Not in a drag, but in a “wait, it's only 7pm?” kind of way. I suddenly had time I didn't know I'd been missing.

Here's a simple experiment: go check your screen time right now. Not the total, just Instagram or YouTube or whatever your default scroll app is. Look at the daily average. Multiply it by 365. That number will probably unsettle you.

Being okay with not knowing

The most common pushback I get when I tell people I'm not on Instagram is some version of “but how do you keep up with what's happening?”

The honest answer: I don't, and I'm fine with it.

I miss a lot of stuff. I don't know what's trending. I find out about news late. None of it has mattered. Not once has missing a reel or a post had any real consequence on my life.

If something actually matters, if it involves someone I care about, the news finds its way to me. Either through them directly or through someone else. It always does. Everything else is noise. I have no interest in knowing what everyone had for dinner or where they went on vacation. And I have no interest in broadcasting my own life either.

FOMO is the fuel that keeps the machine running. You're so afraid of missing something online that you miss everything that's right in front of you.

Letting go of that turns out to be a surprisingly peaceful way to live.

The smallest shift

I'm not going to tell you to delete your apps. You've heard that sermon before and it doesn't work, partly because these apps are specifically designed to make quitting feel unbearable.

But the next time you're waiting for something, a bus, your food, a friend who's running late, try not reaching for your phone. Just for a few minutes.

See what you notice. See how it feels to just sit there with nothing to consume.

You might be bored. That's the point.

Boredom is where the good stuff lives.

***

Thanks for reading. Just notice something on your way home today!

Before the sky had turned from gray to blue, Jesus was already awake near the river with his hands folded and his head bowed. The city was still half asleep, though Philadelphia never fully sleeps. A truck growled somewhere in the distance. Water moved with a slow dark pull along the Delaware. The air carried that cold early feeling that touches skin before the mind is ready for the day. At Penn Treaty Park, the grass still held the night, and the benches were wet from the thin layer of damp that settles before sunrise. Jesus stood a little apart from the walkway where runners would come later, where dog leashes would tighten and loosen, where men with coffee would stare out at the water while thinking about bills, marriages, doctors, children, and things they were tired of carrying alone. For now it was quiet enough to hear the river touch the edge of the city. He prayed there with no audience and no hurry. His face was calm. His shoulders were still. He was not praying to escape the city. He was praying as one who meant to walk fully into it.

When he lifted his head, the first faint line of light had begun to show beyond the water. The bridge in the distance stood like a dark frame against the coming morning. He stayed where he was another moment and looked over the park, over the path, over the streets that would soon fill. He watched a sanitation truck move along Delaware Avenue, and he watched two men unloading supplies behind a nearby building, both moving with the stiffness of people who had already lived a long day before most would wake. Jesus started walking south with the unforced pace of someone who never needed to rush in order to arrive on time. He passed rows of brick buildings, fences, parked cars with fog on the glass, and corner stores still dark except for one whose owner was switching on the lights inside. The city felt ordinary. That was part of what made it holy. Real need rarely announces itself with music. Most suffering lives inside normal mornings.

By the time he reached Old City, the sidewalks had begun to fill with delivery drivers, early commuters, and people standing outside cafes with paper cups warming their hands. A woman in a dark coat was unlocking the door to a small shop on Arch Street. Across from her, a man sat on flattened cardboard near a closed storefront with a blanket around his shoulders and a black duffel bag tucked close to his leg. Most people glanced once and moved on. Some never looked at all. Jesus slowed before he reached him, not in a dramatic way, just enough that the man noticed the change. His face was lined and worn, but not old enough to have reached the age people would guess from looking at him. He had the tired alertness of someone who slept lightly because too much had been taken before.

“Morning,” Jesus said.

The man looked up as though weighing whether this was one more polite word with no real interest behind it. “Yeah,” he said. “Morning.”

Jesus sat down on the low stone ledge a few feet away, close enough to show he meant to stay and far enough not to crowd him. The man studied him for a second. “You need something?”

“No,” Jesus said. “Do you?”

The man let out a small sound that could have been a laugh if it had not been carrying so much bitterness. “That’s a big question for six in the morning.”

Jesus did not answer quickly. He looked up the street where the shop owner now bent over a display inside her window. “Sometimes the big questions show up before breakfast.”

The man rubbed his face with both hands. “Name’s Leon.”

Jesus nodded. “Leon.”

Leon looked at him again, waiting for the exchange to move into the familiar script where names were traded and advice was offered too fast. When that did not happen, something in him loosened just enough for truth to slip through. “I need one good thing not to fall apart today,” he said. “Just one. I’m tired of waking up and feeling like the whole day is already against me.”

Jesus turned toward him with a softness that did not feel like pity. “What would falling apart look like today?”

Leon’s jaw tightened. For a moment it seemed he might shut down. Then his shoulders gave the answer first. “I was supposed to meet my sister at ten over near Jefferson Station. She said if I show up sober and clean, she might let me see my daughter. Might. That’s what she said. Might. My girl turned nine last month. I ain’t seen her in eleven months. Maybe twelve. I stopped counting because it started sounding worse every time I said it out loud.” He looked down at his shoes. “So that’s what falling apart looks like. Me messing this up before I even get there.”

The city kept moving around them. A SEPTA bus sighed at the curb. A man carrying bread trays pushed through a side entrance nearby. Jesus listened as though there was nowhere else in the world he needed to be. “What makes you think you will mess it up?”

Leon shrugged, though there was no ease in it. “Experience.”

Jesus let that sit between them. Then he said, “You are not standing in front of an empty day, Leon. You are standing in front of a day with choices in it. That is not the same thing.”

Leon looked at him hard then, like a man trying to decide whether he was being helped or handled. “Choices don’t change what I already wrecked.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But they do change what you keep wrecking.”

The answer landed without force, and maybe that was why it reached him. Leon turned his head away toward the street. His eyes had gone wet, though he was trying not to show it. “Everybody talks to me like I’m either trash or a project.”

“I’m talking to you like you are a man who is still being called back,” Jesus said.

Leon breathed in and let it out slowly. No lightning split the sky. No crowd gathered. But something honest had entered the morning. Jesus stood and asked him if he would walk a while. Leon looked uncertain, then rose, gathered his duffel, and fell into step beside him.

They moved west along Market Street as the city woke around them. Storefronts brightened. Metal grates rolled upward. The smell of coffee thickened in the air, mixing with bus exhaust, damp concrete, and the first warm notes of breakfast from kitchens opening across Center City. On one corner a woman in hospital scrubs stood staring at her phone with eyes too tired for the hour. On another, two construction workers joked loudly in the flat brave way men sometimes do when they are already tired and do not want to say it. Jesus walked as if he could see the hidden line running through all of it, the thread of strain beneath routine. Leon kept glancing at him from time to time, still not sure why he had decided to come along.

When they reached Reading Terminal Market, the doors were open and the inside had begun its daily rising hum. The place was alive with motion even before the full rush hit. Workers stacked cups, wiped counters, arranged pastries, lifted crates, shouted small things to each other over the clatter of preparation. The smell was rich and mixed, bacon, coffee, frying onions, bread, sugar, and the heavier scent of cleaned floors not yet overtaken by the day. Jesus stepped inside and Leon followed, his duffel over one shoulder and his body carrying that half-defensive tension of a man who has spent too much time being watched.

Near one of the counters, a young woman was arguing with the register clerk in a voice low enough to show embarrassment and sharp enough to show panic. She had two small breakfast items and a carton of milk on the counter. A little boy beside her, maybe five years old, was rubbing one eye with his fist and leaning against her coat. The clerk was not cruel, only impatient in the efficient way the city can teach. The woman checked her wallet again as if money might appear if she looked hard enough. “I know what I have,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. “I’m saying the card should’ve gone through.”

“It didn’t,” the clerk said. “You want me to hold this or cancel it?”

The boy looked up at his mother. “Mama?”

Jesus stepped forward before shame could finish its work. He spoke to the clerk with simple courtesy and paid for the food. The woman turned immediately. “No, I can’t—”

“You can feed him,” Jesus said.

Her mouth tightened as she fought the urge to cry in public. That battle was clear in her face because she had likely fought it many times. “Thank you,” she said quietly. “I thought I transferred money last night. I work nights. I must’ve done something wrong.” She looked at the boy and touched the back of his head. “We’re trying to make it to school and then I gotta get home before I go back out again.”

Jesus nodded. “What is his name?”

“Micah.”

Jesus crouched enough to meet the boy’s eyes. “Good morning, Micah.”

Micah, still half asleep, leaned more into his mother and whispered, “Morning.”

Jesus smiled. “You take care of your mother today.”

Micah gave a solemn little nod that made Leon look away for a second. Something about that child’s sleepy trust had reached him where arguments could not. The woman thanked Jesus again, then hesitated as though she wanted to explain herself to this stranger who had seen her at a breaking point. “I’m not usually like this,” she said. “It’s just been one thing after another.”

Jesus answered her in a voice so even it seemed to lower the noise around them. “You do not owe dignity to anyone who only recognizes it when life is easy.”

She held his gaze for one second longer than strangers usually do. Then she took her son’s hand and moved off into the market, carrying breakfast and the fragile relief of having been spared one more humiliation. Leon watched them disappear into the crowd. “You say stuff like that a lot?” he asked.

“When it is needed,” Jesus said.

Leon shook his head once. “I don’t know if people really hear you.”

“They hear more than they show,” Jesus said.

They found a quieter edge inside the market near a seating area not yet full. Jesus brought Leon coffee and food without making it feel like charity. That mattered. Leon accepted it because it was given without ownership. He ate slowly at first, then faster once his body remembered hunger. Across the room a vendor laughed loudly with a coworker. Somewhere behind them a tray hit stainless steel with a hard bright clang. The market kept filling, and with every minute more of the city entered carrying its own invisible freight. Jesus sat across from Leon and asked him about his daughter.

At first Leon answered in fragments, the way men do when love has become mixed with regret. Her name was Nia. She liked drawing and used to make whole neighborhoods with markers on scrap paper. She used to ask why the moon followed the car home at night. She hated loud hand dryers in public bathrooms. She would not eat crusts unless he told her a story while she pulled them off piece by piece. The more he spoke, the more the roughness in him gave way to grief. He had not lost love. He had lost proximity. For some people that hurts even worse because they know the person is still somewhere on the earth, still laughing, still growing, still living days without them in it.

“I used to think I had time to fix things later,” Leon said, staring into the coffee. “I kept telling myself that. Later. Later when I got steady. Later when I was feeling better. Later when I stopped messing up. Then later turns into almost a year.”

Jesus watched him with the kind of stillness that gives a man room to stop performing. “A lot of lives are damaged by the lie that later is always waiting.”

Leon swallowed hard and looked away. “I don’t know how to stand in front of my sister without hearing everything she got a right to say.”

“You let her say what is true,” Jesus answered. “And you do not run from what is true just because it hurts.”

“That sounds easy when you say it.”

“It will not feel easy,” Jesus said. “But it will still be right.”

When they stepped back out onto Market Street, the morning was fully alive. Office workers moved with that familiar determined speed of people threading narrow spaces between time and obligation. Food carts sent up steam. A man selling bottled water from a cooler called out to passersby. The sidewalks around City Hall had thickened into movement and noise. Jesus led Leon south toward Dilworth Park, where the fountain sent a thin bright spray into the air and people crossed through the open space in diagonal lines of purpose. City Hall rose over them with its great stone weight and detail, dignified and watchful, as if it had seen every kind of human promise and failure pass beneath it.

Near the edge of the park sat a woman in a motorized wheelchair with a paper bag on her lap and a look of contained frustration on her face. She kept trying to reach something that had fallen near the wheel but could not bend low enough without risking tipping forward. People streamed around her with the expert unseeing of commuters who tell themselves they are late. Jesus stepped toward her and picked up the dropped item, a small orange prescription bottle. He placed it gently in her hand.

She exhaled in relief and then in annoyance at herself. “Thank you. I hate when that happens.”

Jesus smiled. “It does not lessen you to need a hand.”

She gave a short skeptical sound. “Maybe. But this city teaches you to move like help ain’t coming.”

“Has it been that kind of morning?” Jesus asked.

She snorted softly. “That kind of year.”

Her name was Denise. She had come in from West Philly for a medical appointment that had been rescheduled after she had already paid for transit and arranged for a neighbor to check on her dog. The bottle in her hand was for nerve pain. Her landlord had raised the rent again. Her younger brother no longer called unless he needed money, which she did not have. She was speaking more freely than she expected to, and every sentence seemed to surprise her, but Jesus listened with the gentleness of someone who treated interruptions as invitations rather than inconveniences. Leon stood nearby, silent, holding his duffel and watching.

When Denise finished, she looked embarrassed by her own honesty. “Sorry. You probably didn’t ask for all that.”

Jesus shook his head. “There are many people carrying pain in public while trying to look private.”

That made her laugh for real, though only once. “That’s about right.”

He asked if she had eaten. She said not yet. Jesus pointed toward a nearby stand and told Leon to help her get something warm. Leon looked startled by being included, but Denise was already turning her chair. “You coming or what?” she said.

It was the first time that morning Leon had been needed by someone other than himself. He followed her across the park. They came back with coffee and a breakfast sandwich, and Denise looked faintly astonished at the fact that the man with the duffel had waited patiently while her order took longer than expected. “You got a daughter?” she asked him out of nowhere.

Leon froze for a beat, then nodded.

“I can tell,” she said. “You stand like a man who misses somebody.”

There are moments when truth enters sideways and goes deeper than if it had come straight on. Leon did not answer. He just looked at Jesus, then away. Denise ate while the city moved around them, and after a little while she left for the subway elevator, turning once to lift two fingers in a small gesture of thanks that was half salute, half blessing. Leon watched her disappear. “She didn’t even know me,” he said.

“Some people know enough when they see sorrow clearly,” Jesus replied.

From Dilworth Park they moved east again, then south, crossing streets where the city kept changing block by block. Around Washington Square the pace shifted slightly. There was more room in the sidewalks, more filtered light, more of the old brick and stone that makes parts of Philadelphia feel as though history still breathes close to the surface. They passed small storefronts, office doors, apartment entrances, and people living whole interior lives behind ordinary expressions. Outside a corner pharmacy, a man in his thirties stood talking too loudly into his phone, the kind of loud that tells you he is scared and does not know where to put it. “No, I’m telling you they said maybe today, maybe tomorrow, but I can’t just leave her there.” He turned away and pressed his hand against his forehead. “I know what the insurance lady said. I heard her.”

Jesus slowed. The man ended the call and stared hard at nothing. His tie was loosened. His shirt was clean, but wrinkled from wear. He carried a takeout bag he had clearly forgotten he was holding. Jesus asked if someone he loved was in the hospital.

The man looked ready to brush him off, but exhaustion often lowers walls faster than politeness does. “My wife,” he said. “Pennsylvania Hospital. Complications after surgery. They keep telling me things that sound careful but not clear. I got a six-year-old with my mother in South Philly. I’ve missed two days of work. My boss started out sympathetic. Now he’s just saying, ‘Keep me updated.’ You know how people say that when they don’t want details.” He laughed once, but it was empty. “I came out here because I thought if I stayed in that room one more minute, I was gonna stop being useful.”

Jesus asked his name. “Eric.”

“Eric,” Jesus said, “you do not have to carry tomorrow before it arrives.”

Eric gave him the hollow look of a man too tired for sayings. “That doesn’t help me much with payroll.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But fear multiplies faster than facts. You are speaking to worst-case shadows as if they have already become your life.”

Eric stared at him, thrown off by the accuracy. His eyes reddened. “How do you not do that?”

Jesus glanced toward the hospital buildings standing into the sky a few blocks away. “You stay with what is in front of you. You love the person who is in front of you. You take the next honest step. You let tomorrow come as tomorrow.”

Eric looked down at the takeout bag, then back up. “I used to pray,” he said, as if admitting something shameful. “Then years go by and real life gets loud and you don’t know what to say anymore except when things go bad.”

Jesus answered without a trace of rebuke. “Then say the frightened thing. Say the tired thing. Say the confused thing. God is not made distant by honest speech.”

Eric’s face changed, not into peace exactly, but into recognition. He nodded once, slowly. “I should get back in there.”

“Yes,” Jesus said. “Go sit by her again.”

Eric turned and walked toward the hospital, a little straighter than before, still carrying fear, but not as if fear was all that remained. Leon watched him go. “You didn’t tell him it would be okay.”

“No,” Jesus said.

“Why not?”

“Because people need truth more than performance,” Jesus said. “And sometimes truth is that they are not abandoned inside uncertainty.”

That answer stayed with Leon as they continued. Around noon the sky had brightened and then dulled again under a thin cover of cloud. The city’s sound deepened into full daytime volume. On Broad Street, horns pressed into each other. Near Walnut Street, buses kneeled to the curb and rose again. A cyclist cursed at a car door. Someone laughed too hard outside a restaurant. A church bell rang somewhere at a distance and was swallowed by traffic. Philadelphia was not polished. That was part of its honesty. It showed wear. It showed struggle. It showed pride and fatigue living side by side.

They moved west toward the Schuylkill, passing through Rittenhouse for a stretch where the sidewalks filled with strollers, shoppers, delivery workers, dog walkers, men in expensive jackets, women answering work calls with careful voices, and people sitting alone on benches pretending to look at their phones while fighting interior battles no one else could see. In the square itself, the trees held the early season lightly, not yet full but alive. The fountain moved. Sparrows hopped near crumbs. A man in business clothes sat bent forward with both elbows on his knees, staring at the ground between his shoes as if something precious had fallen there and could not be found.

Jesus noticed him immediately. He always noticed the people pain made invisible.

The man was not old, maybe early forties, with the kind of clean professional appearance that can hide collapse for months at a time. His phone lay facedown beside him on the bench. His wedding ring caught a little gray light. Jesus sat at the far end of the bench and waited. After a minute, the man spoke without looking up. “You ever get tired of hearing your own thoughts?”

“Yes,” Jesus said. “Many people do.”

The man gave a grim half smile. “Good. Then I’m not special.”

Jesus looked out over the square. “Do you want to tell me what they are saying?”

For a while the man said nothing. Then the words came with the flatness of someone who had rehearsed them in silence. “That I blew up my life in a way I can’t fix. That I kept telling myself I was under pressure and that pressure explained everything. That I worked late and drank more and stayed out and drifted and lied in smaller pieces until the lies added up to a house I could no longer live in. My wife found messages two weeks ago. She took our daughter to her sister’s. My lawyer says keep things civil. My brother says give her space. My mother says fight for your family. Everybody has advice. Nobody can tell me how to sit inside myself right now.”

Jesus let the man’s words breathe in the air between them. A woman pushed a stroller past the bench. Somewhere nearby a dog barked sharply and was hushed. The world kept moving. “What is your name?”

“Adam.”

Jesus nodded. “Adam, there are people who only feel sorry because they got caught. That sorrow does not heal much. Then there are people who finally see the damage clearly and cannot bear what they have become. That pain can become a doorway if they stop defending themselves.”

Adam looked at him then, really looked. “You saying there’s still a way back?”

“I am saying truth is the only road that goes anywhere worth going,” Jesus answered. “Not image. Not excuse. Not strategy. Truth. You cannot rebuild a house while hiding the fire.”

Adam shut his eyes for a moment. “I keep thinking if I just say the right thing, maybe I can control what happens.”

“You cannot control forgiveness,” Jesus said. “You can only become honest enough to receive it if it is offered and honest enough to live rightly if it is not.”

That was harder than comfort. It was also cleaner. Adam pressed his thumb against his wedding ring and stared ahead. “I don’t know who I’ve been for a long time.”

Jesus looked at him with grave kindness. “That is a painful thing to see. But it is better than dying without ever seeing it.”

A long silence followed. Then Adam nodded once with tears on his face he had stopped trying to hide. When Jesus and Leon rose to leave, Adam was still sitting there, but no longer like a man hiding from himself. He looked like a man who had begun the hardest conversation of his life in the only place it could begin.

They crossed the river later on the Walnut Street Bridge, with the wind moving harder over the Schuylkill and the water below carrying broken reflections of buildings and cloud. On the western side the air shifted. University City held a different rhythm, students with backpacks, researchers, hospital staff, maintenance crews, patients, families waiting on corners, ride-share drivers double-parked near medical entrances, and the deep unspoken tension that always gathers around places where people fear losing someone. The Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania rose ahead with its glass and stone and constant flow of need. Jesus did not enter immediately. He stood for a moment outside one of the public areas where people came and went with flowers, overnight bags, bad coffee, and brave faces.

A young woman sat near the entrance with two vending machine snacks beside her and both hands wrapped around a cup she was not drinking. Her hair was pulled back carelessly, her eyes swollen with lack of sleep. She stared at the automatic doors each time they opened, then looked away as if she could not bear one more uncertain update. Jesus sat near her and asked who she was waiting for.

She answered without thinking, like someone grateful that a question had been asked gently. “My father. Stroke. They say he’s stable. They keep saying stable like it should make me feel something better.” She swallowed hard. “My mom died four years ago. It’s just been me and him since then. He drives a school bus. He still packs his lunch in the same old cooler. He calls me if a warning light comes on in his car like I know anything. He still leaves me voicemails if I don’t answer even though I’m thirty-two.” Her mouth trembled. “I’m not ready for this.”

Jesus asked her name.

“Marissa.”

He looked toward the doors with her. “Love makes people feel unready for loss, even when loss has not yet arrived.”

She stared at the cup in her hands. “I’m ashamed of how little time I made lately. I kept telling him I was busy. I was busy. But now all I can think about is every dinner I said no to because I was tired or had work or just wanted to be home.”

“You are speaking from fear and love at the same time,” Jesus said. “Do not turn that into self-punishment while he is still here to be loved.”

Her breath caught. “I don’t know how to just sit and wait.”

“Then sit and love him in the waiting,” Jesus answered. “Be there when he wakes. Hold his hand if he can feel it. Let him hear your voice even if he cannot answer. Do not waste the living hour by grieving the hour that has not come.”

Marissa looked at him with tears pushing up again. There was no easy relief in his words, but there was direction, and direction can feel like mercy to a person drowning in helplessness. She nodded slowly. “I can do that,” she said, almost to herself.

Leon had gone quiet again. The hospital seemed to unsettle him. He kept glancing at doors, nurses, orderlies, patients in wheelchairs, people with wristbands, people clutching paperwork, people walking fast because standing still would mean feeling too much. Jesus noticed. “Who are you thinking about?” he asked.

Leon looked away. “My mother.”

“Is she here?”

“No. Temple, last I heard. Rehab floor after a fall.” He swallowed. “My sister told me a week ago. I ain’t gone.”

Jesus said nothing at first, and in that silence Leon heard his own answer more clearly than if it had been dragged out of him. “She used to cover for me,” he said. “Back when I was messing up worse. Lied to people for me. Gave me money she ain’t have. Missed work to come find me. Then one day she stopped answering. Can’t even blame her. I made a whole career outta taking.” His eyes fixed on the hospital entrance. “I don’t know how to stand in front of her without seeing every version of me she had to survive.”

Jesus looked at him steadily. “Then do not stand there pretending to be better than what you were. Stand there true.”

Leon’s jaw worked. “What if she don’t want to see me?”

“Then you will still have done what was right,” Jesus answered.

The words did not solve it. They did something better. They made hiding harder.

By midafternoon the clouds had thickened, and a light rain began to fall, the kind that darkens sidewalks and puts a sheen on streets without fully committing. Jesus and Leon moved back east, sheltering briefly under overhangs and awnings, passing small stores, takeout spots, laundromats, and blocks where life looked worn but active. In Kensington the rain seemed to deepen what was already heavy there. On Kensington Avenue beneath the tracks, the city showed one of its rawest faces. People moved with the restless drag of addiction, trauma, survival, and numbness layered together. Some stood in clusters. Some wandered. Some sat folded into themselves against walls or bus stops while the rest of the city, only a few miles away, kept buying salads, going to meetings, and speaking about efficiency.

Jesus walked there without disgust and without distance. That alone changed the air around him. People feel when they are being looked at as a warning sign instead of a soul. Near a storefront with a security gate half down, a woman in a green rain jacket sat on an overturned milk crate, shivering though it was not cold enough to explain all of it. Her hands were unsteady. Her eyes carried that torn, worn brightness of a person whose body and mind had both been through too much. A younger man stood nearby trying to keep watch without seeming to hover. He was angry in the way people become angry when love has run out of tools.

The woman saw Jesus first. “You got any cash?” she asked, not aggressively, just tired.

Jesus came close enough to speak without making her strain. “What is your name?”

She frowned as if the question itself were unusual. “Tasha.”

“And yours?” he asked the younger man.

“Malik.”

Tasha looked between them. “If this is church stuff, I ain’t in the mood.”

Jesus did not flinch. “It is human stuff.”

That caught Malik off guard enough that he gave a short laugh despite himself. Tasha did not laugh. She looked as though she had long ago become suspicious of everyone who approached with clean words. “I been through every program,” she said. “Every speech. Every promise. So unless you can make me not be me for five minutes, I don’t need it.”

Jesus knelt so his eyes were level with hers. Rain tapped the metal above them in soft irregular clicks. A train thundered somewhere overhead. “You do not need me to lie to you,” he said. “You need someone to tell you that your life has not become worthless because pain and poison have been fighting inside it.”

Her mouth tightened. “That sound nice.”

“It is not decoration,” Jesus said. “It is truth.”

Malik had gone still. “I’m her brother,” he said. “I come out here every week. Sometimes I find her. Sometimes I don’t. I got two kids, a job in Port Richmond, rent going up, and every time my phone rings I think maybe it’s the call. You know what she tells me? She tells me stop coming because she don’t want them kids to remember their aunt like this. But she’s still my sister.” His voice cracked on the last word with anger and grief locked together. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do anymore.”

Jesus stood and faced him. “Love without control is one of the hardest burdens a person can carry.”

Malik rubbed both hands over his face. “That’s exactly it. I can’t save her. I can’t leave her.”

“No,” Jesus said. “But you can keep telling the truth. You can keep refusing to treat her like she is already gone. And you can remember that being unable to carry another person out by force is not the same as not loving them enough.”

Tasha was crying now, though quietly and with obvious irritation at herself. “I used to braid hair,” she said. “I was good too. People used to wait on me. Saturday mornings my kitchen would be full. Music on. Coffee going. My girl sitting on the floor with her coloring books. I had hands then. Steady hands.”

Jesus looked at her hands where they trembled in her lap. “They are still your hands.”

She shook her head fiercely. “No they ain’t.”

He did not argue in a way that would make her defend despair even harder. He only said, “The deepest thieves do not only steal money or time. They try to steal identity. That is why you must hear me. You are not only what has happened to you.”

The rain continued. The city moved past at a distance. Malik stood with tears in his eyes and his fists clenched because love sometimes feels humiliating when it has failed to protect someone. Tasha lowered her head. For a long time no one spoke.

At last she whispered, “I’m tired.”

Jesus answered with great gentleness. “Then let tired be true. But do not call tired the end.”

That was where the afternoon bent. Not into a neat miracle that wrapped pain cleanly. Into something smaller and more difficult. Tasha agreed to go with Malik to a nearby outreach center she had refused before, not because all hunger for the old numbing had disappeared, but because for one thin honest moment she remembered she was still someone worth carrying. Malik did not celebrate too early. He simply put his hand lightly at her back as they moved. Before they left, Tasha looked once over her shoulder at Jesus with a face full of confusion, shame, hope, and fear all at once, which is often what the beginning of return looks like.

When they were gone, Leon stood under the edge of the awning staring out at the rain. “That place gets in your chest,” he said.

“Yes,” Jesus replied.

Leon’s voice was different now. Less guarded. “I keep thinking maybe I’m one bad month from ending up somewhere people look at me like that.”

Jesus turned toward him. “Then stop walking toward the cliff while telling yourself you are only visiting the edge.”

Leon closed his eyes. He did not argue. The rain softened. Somewhere up the block a siren rose and fell.

By the time they headed back toward Center City, the afternoon had begun slipping toward evening. The rain cleared and left the city washed and reflective. Puddles held bits of sky. Tires hissed over wet streets. Food smells returned stronger in the cooler air. Leon checked the time and stopped walking.

“It’s almost five,” he said.

Jesus looked at him.

“My sister said ten, but then she texted me noon saying plans changed. Said if I was serious, come by her place in South Philly after work. She sent the address.” He swallowed. “I didn’t answer because I wasn’t sure.”

“Are you sure now?” Jesus asked.

Leon stared down the street as if the answer might be written there. “No,” he said. “But I know I ain’t supposed to run.”

Jesus nodded once. “Then go.”

Leon looked at him with something close to fear. “You coming?”

Jesus smiled, but there was gravity in it. “This next walk is yours.”

Leon’s face tightened the way it had that morning when he first named the possibility of seeing his daughter. “What if she slams the door?”

“Then you will have stood there truthfully,” Jesus said again. “And truth is never wasted.”

Leon let out a shaky breath. “I don’t even know how to start.”

“Start without defending yourself,” Jesus answered. “Start with what is true and leave room for what is painful.”

Leon nodded slowly. Then, because some men need one more permission before they move, he asked the question underneath all the others. “You really think a man can come back from being who he’s been?”

Jesus looked at him with quiet certainty. “A man can come back when he stops calling darkness home.”

Leon stood still for one last second. Then he adjusted the duffel on his shoulder and turned south toward the subway, not steady exactly, but willing. Sometimes willingness is the first strong step a soul takes after years of collapse.

Jesus watched him go until the crowd took him. Then he turned and began walking east through the city as the lights came on one by one. Offices emptied. Restaurants filled. Hospital windows glowed. Traffic thickened near the bridges. The evening gathered people into all the places where life goes on, apartments, shelters, waiting rooms, kitchens, train platforms, bars, church basements, row houses, corners, parks, and bedsides. Philadelphia was beautiful in the way honest places are beautiful, not because pain was absent, but because people kept carrying one another through it in a thousand imperfect ways.

He walked toward the waterfront again, back through Old City where dinner voices were rising from restaurant patios and tourists moved past brick facades without knowing the private heartbreaks unfolding behind nearby doors. Somewhere in South Philly, Leon was likely climbing steps toward a conversation he should have had months earlier. Somewhere at HUP, Marissa was sitting beside her father and speaking to him while the machines kept their measured watch. Somewhere near Pennsylvania Hospital, Eric was opening the takeout bag he had forgotten and eating cold food beside his wife rather than imagining tomorrow into a monster. Somewhere in Kensington, Malik was waiting through intake with his sister, not trusting the moment enough to feel safe, but not walking away either. The city held all of them at once.

And as Jesus continued toward the river in the coming dark, the day was not yet done.

The sky over the Delaware had turned the color of cooled steel by the time Jesus reached the stretch of waterfront near Spruce Street Harbor Park. Evening had settled in, though the city was still fully awake. Lights reflected in the water in long broken lines. Voices drifted from small groups gathered under the trees and near the walkways. A couple stood at the railing saying very little. A man in a work uniform ate from a takeout container with the tired focus of someone finally stopping after too many hours on his feet. Somewhere behind the brighter public spaces, a woman argued on her phone in the sharp low voice people use when they are trying not to let strangers hear the shape of a private disaster. The river moved as it had before dawn, indifferent to schedules and arguments and human fear, yet somehow fitting all of it inside its steady dark flow.

Jesus kept walking without hurry, taking in each face, each posture, each small sign of what the day had cost people. He passed a family with two children running ahead and a mother calling after them to slow down. He passed a young man pretending to laugh too hard with his friends while his eyes kept dropping toward his phone between jokes. He passed an older woman in a nurse’s jacket standing still by the water, not looking at anything except the black surface below. She had the posture of someone who had spent a lifetime taking care of others and had now run up against a sorrow too close to professional distance. Jesus did not stop with every person because love is not always shown through interruption. Sometimes it is shown through witness. Sometimes it is prayer that happens without the other person knowing someone has seen them at all.

He moved north along the river and then inland again, back toward the narrower blocks where the city closes in and lives are stacked beside one another in old brick and thin walls and sounds that carry. Evening in Philadelphia has its own texture. Delivery scooters cut through the streets. Music leaked from open windows. Pots clanged faintly from kitchens. Someone somewhere practiced trumpet badly and with conviction. SEPTA trains carried people home to apartments, row houses, shelters, and borrowed couches. At the entrance to a station near Market East, Jesus paused as people came up from below in waves, each wearing the face of a life still in progress. Some looked numb. Some looked irritated. Some looked already spent though the night had barely begun. One teenage girl climbed the steps with a backpack hanging from one shoulder and tears she was trying to blink back before she reached the sidewalk. A boy about her age followed a step behind, saying something careful and quiet. She shook her head without stopping. Jesus watched them go. Pain was everywhere, but not all pain wanted an audience. He let them pass.

A little later, near Chinatown, the streets were bright with signs and restaurant windows and the scent of cooking that reaches out onto the sidewalk and wraps around passing strangers. The city there felt compressed and alive, conversation spilling from doorways, kitchen workers moving fast, families stepping around one another with practiced ease. On one block Jesus saw a delivery driver sitting on the curb beside his scooter with one hand pressed against his stomach and his phone in the other. His insulated bag leaned against a fire hydrant. At first glance he looked like any worker catching a fast break. At second glance he looked like a man trying not to unravel.

Jesus stepped over and sat on the curb beside him. The driver glanced up, wary and embarrassed to have been seen in weakness. “I’m good,” he said automatically.

Jesus looked at the phone in his hand, then at the untouched bottle of water by his foot. “You are trying to be.”

The man gave a tired laugh with no joy in it. “That obvious?”

“Only to someone looking,” Jesus said.

The man put the phone face down on his knee and rubbed both hands over his face. He was in his late twenties maybe, with the weathered fatigue of somebody carrying more than one job, more than one expectation, more than one version of himself that never quite lined up. “My name’s Rafael,” he said. “I’m supposed to be dropping off two more orders, but I just got a message from my cousin that my uncle got picked up again. DUI this time. My aunt’s losing her mind. My mother wants me to call everyone. My boss from the warehouse texted asking if I can come in early tomorrow. Rent’s due next week. And my girl says we need to talk, which is never good.” He lifted his hand vaguely toward the street. “I’m just trying to sit here for five minutes before I turn into somebody I don’t like.”

Jesus nodded. “What kind of somebody is that?”

Rafael looked away. “The kind that snaps at people who didn’t do nothing. The kind that acts like everybody needs something and nobody asks whether I’m holding too much already. The kind that starts thinking maybe if I just disappeared for a few days everybody would figure themselves out without me.”

Jesus let the last sentence settle because people often speak their deepest exhaustion in disguised ways first. “And would disappearing bring peace?”

Rafael stared at the scooter parked beside them. “No. Probably just more problems.”

“Then it is not peace you are imagining,” Jesus said. “It is relief.”

Rafael looked at him, surprised by the precision. “Yeah,” he said after a moment. “That’s right.”

A waitress emerged from a nearby restaurant carrying a bag to a waiting customer. A bus rolled past at the corner. Night traffic reflected off wet patches still left from the afternoon rain. Jesus spoke in the steady tone that had marked him all day. “Relief matters. But people often chase it in ways that cost them more than the burden they were trying to escape.”

Rafael swallowed and nodded. “That sounds like my whole family.”

Jesus smiled softly, not because it was amusing, but because recognition can be the first step toward mercy. “Then perhaps tonight you should do one honest thing instead of ten frantic things.”

Rafael frowned. “Like what?”

“Deliver what you have in front of you. Drink the water by your foot. Call the one person who most needs calm, not the ten who will only multiply chaos. Then go home and speak truthfully to the woman who wants to talk to you.”

Rafael let out a breath and shook his head. “That sounds too simple.”

“A lot of what saves a life feels too simple when a mind is crowded,” Jesus said.

The young man sat with that. Then he picked up the water bottle, opened it, and drank. It was a small thing, almost nothing from the outside. But sometimes the soul returns through ordinary doors. He looked at Jesus again with the expression people wear when something in them has just been steadied enough to keep going. “You ever do this all the time?” he asked.

Jesus stood. “All the time.”

Rafael smiled then, faint but real. “Thanks,” he said.

Jesus left him on the curb, not cured of pressure, not freed from complexity, but no longer spinning inside it the same way.

As he moved south again, the night deepened and the city thinned in places while crowding in others. In Society Hill the old streets held a quieter kind of wealth, though behind those doors too there were fights and regrets and silent meals and rooms where someone sat awake beside a lamp wondering how life had come to feel so lonely while looking so complete from the outside. Jesus passed through those blocks as naturally as he had passed under the tracks in Kensington. He carried no preference for polished suffering over visible suffering. Pain did not become more important because it had a better address.

Near a small corner grocery not far from South Street, he saw a boy of maybe sixteen sitting on the stoop beside the shuttered storefront next door. A bicycle lay on its side nearby. The boy had a hoodie pulled up though the evening was not cold enough to require it. He was not doing anything obvious to attract attention. That was the point. He was trying to disappear in plain sight. Jesus sat on the stoop a short distance away and waited until the boy acknowledged him with a sideways glance.

“You waiting for someone?” Jesus asked.

The boy shrugged. “Not really.”

“What’s your name?”

“Tyrese.”

Jesus nodded. “Tyrese, you look like somebody trying very hard not to go home.”

The boy did not answer immediately, which was answer enough. Cars passed on the wet street. Music from a bar farther down the block drifted in and out as the door opened and closed. Finally Tyrese said, “My mother’s boyfriend gets drunk on Thursdays.”

Jesus did not move. “And tonight is Thursday.”

Tyrese nodded once, his face still angled away. “He ain’t always crazy. That’s the thing. He can be normal enough that people think my mom’s overreacting. Then other nights he talks too loud and starts knocking stuff over and asking questions he already knows the answer to. If I’m there, he likes to push. If I’m not there, I don’t know what’s happening to my little sister.” He pressed both palms against the step between his knees. “So I sit out here till I think he passed out or left.”

Jesus listened as though the whole city had narrowed to one stoop and one frightened boy. “Does your mother know you wait outside?”

“She knows without us talking about it,” Tyrese said. “She says she’s handling it. But handling it just means making excuses in a tired voice.”

That sentence carried more years in it than his age should have allowed. Jesus asked where his sister was.

“Inside. She’s eight. She acts brave when he gets loud. Starts drawing or doing school stuff like if she looks busy, he won’t notice her.”

A car pulled up to the curb across the street, then moved on when someone else took the spot. Tyrese watched it, then watched nothing. “I keep thinking I should do something big. Like call the cops or grab my sister and leave or hit him with something if he puts his hands on my mom again. But then I think about foster care or my mom crying or me getting locked up and I just…” He shook his head. “I don’t know how to save everybody.”

Jesus turned slightly toward him. “You are carrying a burden a child should not have been handed.”

Tyrese’s jaw tightened because boys who are forced into early manhood often do not know what to do when someone names the injustice of it. “I’m not a child.”

“No,” Jesus said gently. “You are being made old too soon.”

The boy’s eyes filled, though he fought it. “I can’t keep living like this.”

Jesus looked toward the row house Tyrese had been trying not to look at. “Tonight, you need one thing more than anger. You need light.”

Tyrese frowned. “What does that mean?”

“It means what is hidden must be brought where truth can see it,” Jesus answered. “Who is one adult outside that house who already knows enough to believe you?”

Tyrese hesitated. “My aunt Keisha. She lives in West Philly.”

“Call her,” Jesus said.

The boy gave him a helpless look. “Right now?”

“Yes.”

Tyrese stared at the phone in his pocket as though it were heavier than it should be. “She’s gonna be mad.”

“Let her be mad at what is wrong,” Jesus said. “Not at you for telling the truth.”

Tyrese pulled out the phone slowly. His hands shook, whether from fear or adrenaline or both. He scrolled, stopped, backed out, found the name again. Then he looked at Jesus. “What if this blows everything up?”

Jesus answered with a clarity that left no room for confusion. “Some things need to be blown open because too many people are being crushed under the silence.”

Tyrese pressed call. He did not put the phone on speaker, but enough of his aunt’s voice could be heard in sharp concerned bursts to know she answered on the second ring. At first he said the usual nothing, “You busy?” Then his face changed and the truth began coming out. He spoke in fragments. He looked embarrassed. He nearly backed away from it twice. But he stayed with it. When the call ended, he looked sick with fear and also slightly relieved, which is how honesty often feels the first time it breaks through a sealed room.

“She’s coming,” he said.

Jesus nodded. “Good.”

Tyrese wiped his face roughly with the sleeve of his hoodie. “I don’t even know who you are.”

Jesus looked at him with deep kindness. “Someone who wanted you to stop sitting alone in the dark with a problem that was hurting all of you.”

The boy laughed once through his tears. “That’s… yeah.” He could not finish.

Jesus stayed with him until headlights pulled up twenty minutes later and a woman got out fast, already angry in the right direction. She moved with the fierce focus of someone who had suspected and now had confirmation. Tyrese stood when he saw her and suddenly looked younger, as children often do the second real help appears. She crossed to him, took his face in both hands, asked one hard quick question, and then wrapped him in her arms. Jesus stepped away before she turned toward the house. Some moments belong to families once truth has reached them.

The city gave off more shine now that full night had taken hold. South Street carried its usual mix of noise, youth, impatience, performance, hunger, and loneliness dressed up as movement. People lined up outside bars. Groups passed laughing too loudly. A man argued with a parking app and lost. Two women carrying leftovers walked arm in arm and said almost nothing because one of them was crying. Jesus moved through it all as if he could hear the single human ache beneath a thousand different expressions.

He continued south into neighborhoods where the blocks narrowed and homes sat shoulder to shoulder under porch lights and window glow. Somewhere ahead, in a modest row house on a quieter street, Leon had reached the address his sister had sent. Jesus did not walk there, but his mind and prayer held the moment as surely as if he stood beside the steps.

Inside that house, Leon had stood in a narrow entryway with rain-damp shoes and his duffel hanging uselessly from his shoulder while his sister, Renee, looked at him with the guarded disbelief of a woman who had learned not to trust hope too early. She was younger than her tired eyes made her seem. Her work badge still hung from her neck. The smell of onions and something roasting had filled the house, and a cartoon voice could be heard faintly from another room, where Nia sat unaware that the whole emotional balance of the evening stood on the threshold. Leon had opened his mouth, probably with a plan, and the plan had vanished.

“I know,” he had likely said first, because people often begin there when the shame is larger than language.

Renee would not have let him hide inside vague sorrow. “Do you?” she might have asked. “Because I do not have energy for half of this tonight.”

And because Jesus had told him not to defend himself, Leon would have done something unusual for a man with his history. He would have stayed with the truth. He would have said he had lied, drifted, promised what he did not keep, disappeared when it hurt others most, and used pain as permission to keep doing damage. He would have said he did not come to ask for trust on credit. He came because he was done treating later like a guarantee. He came because he missed his child. He came because their mother was in rehab and he had hidden from that too. He came because he was tired of becoming less than the man he once thought he might still be.

None of that would have made the room easy. Truth rarely makes a room easy first. It makes it real.

Nia would have heard his voice then and come to the doorway with a pencil in her hand and caution in her eyes. Children remember absence differently than adults. They do not always have words for it, but their bodies know. Leon would have seen in one instant how much time had happened to her without him. She would have grown taller. Her face would have changed in small ways. Her expression might have held both wanting and uncertainty. That is one of the hardest combinations a father can face because it tells him love remained, but safety did not.

If he knelt then, it would not have been theatrical. It would have been because standing felt impossible. Maybe he would have said only her name. Maybe that was all he could trust himself with. Maybe she would not have run to him right away. Maybe she would have stood there examining the distance between memory and reality. But children are often braver in love than the adults who fail them. She might have stepped forward slowly and asked the question that mattered most to her, not the grown question about sobriety or reliability or systems or court arrangements, but the child question. “Are you staying for dinner?”

That question alone could have broken a man open. Because hidden inside it are other questions. Are you leaving again? Are you real tonight? Do I get to relax? Am I allowed to hope? Leon, standing in the wreckage of the life he had helped make, would have had only one honest answer available. “If your aunt says I can.”

And perhaps Renee, still not soft but no longer closed, would have turned back toward the kitchen and said, “Take off your shoes then. Don’t make me regret it.”

Mercy often enters a room sounding almost ordinary.

Jesus carried all of that in the quiet place of his spirit as he walked through the city night, though he did not interfere with what those people themselves needed to choose. Love does not always remove consequence. Sometimes it walks beside people until they stop lying and become capable of receiving grace without cheapening it.

Later, near Broad and Snyder, he stepped into a small carryout place where the fluorescent lights were harsher than the mood of the room. A woman behind the counter moved fast with the flat efficiency of the dinner rush. Two men waited for sandwiches. A delivery app chimed from somewhere behind the register. At the far table sat an older man in a Phillies cap slowly eating fries without much appetite. Jesus noticed his hands first, stiff and marked, the hands of someone who had labored long and now did not know what to do with evenings. When one of the younger men brushed past him too quickly and knocked a napkin holder from the table, the older man flinched with a sensitivity that came from more than surprise. Jesus took the seat across from him after asking if it was free.

The man shrugged. “Long as you don’t mind the company.”

Jesus smiled. “I don’t.”

For a minute they sat without speaking. The hum of the refrigerator case filled the space between orders being called. The man finally said, “You look like somebody who ain’t scared of quiet.”

“It can be a friend,” Jesus said.

The man nodded and chewed once more before setting the fries aside. “Not for everybody.”

Jesus waited.

“My wife died in November,” the man said. “Forty-one years. House been too loud empty ever since.” He tapped a finger on the table. “You’d think after all this time I’d know how to be by myself for an evening. Turns out I don’t.” He looked up. “Name’s Walter.”

Jesus repeated it gently. “Walter.”

Walter stared toward the counter where nobody needed him. “I keep leaving the TV on because silence feels like proof. My daughter says join a group. My neighbor says get a dog. Church people say she’s with the Lord, which I believe, but that don’t change that her slippers are still under the bed and I still turn to tell her stuff before remembering.” He let out a breath. “I ain’t angry at God. Not exactly. Just… I don’t know what to do with the shape of my life now.”

Jesus looked at the man with the deep patience of one who honors grief by not tidying it up. “A long love leaves a long echo.”

Walter blinked hard and looked away. “That’s true.”

“It is not weakness that the house feels altered,” Jesus said. “It is testimony.”

Walter sat still under that word. Testimony. Not failure. Not inability to cope. Evidence of real love having filled the place for decades. His eyes went wet. “Nobody says it like that,” he murmured.

Jesus glanced at the untouched fries. “Who have you spoken to honestly this week?”

Walter gave a short tired laugh. “A pharmacist. Cashier at Acme. Fella at the hardware store who thought I wanted to discuss leaf bags.”

“Then tonight when you go home,” Jesus said, “call your daughter and tell her one true thing, not the safe thing. Tell her what hurts. Let love answer love.”

Walter nodded slowly. “I can do that.”

When his order number was called, Jesus rose. Walter looked up at him with something steadier in his face now, not joy, but less isolation. “You from around here?” he asked.

Jesus smiled. “Close enough.”

Outside, the night air had cooled. He walked east again, then north, letting the city carry him through one more sweep of its neighborhoods and lights and need. Philadelphia after dark was still Philadelphia, fierce and bruised and funny and tired and stubbornly alive. Men unloaded restaurant supplies by hand trucks. A woman in scrubs waited for a bus and leaned against the pole like sleep might claim her where she stood. Teenagers clustered at a corner store and performed toughness for one another because they were afraid softness would not survive the neighborhood. An apartment window above the street framed a woman watering one plant while talking on speakerphone to someone she missed. Everywhere, ordinary life. Everywhere, the immense hidden weight of it.

At one point Jesus passed a church with its doors closed and steps damp from the earlier rain. A small handwritten notice near the entrance announced a food pantry schedule and a grief support meeting on Tuesdays. He stopped for a moment and looked at the paper taped crookedly to the glass. This too was the city. Not only sorrow and not only sin, but the countless worn places where people kept making room for one another in God’s name with folding chairs and coffee urns and donated cans and small brave prayers. The kingdom often comes quietly through tired volunteers and badly printed signs and rooms that smell faintly of old carpet and mercy.

As midnight drew nearer, the streets thinned. The louder parts of the city remained loud, but there were longer stretches now where footsteps could be heard on their own. Jesus made his way back toward the river. He did not move in a straight line because love rarely does. He let the city have him one block at a time. In that wandering return, he passed Jefferson again and thought of the woman from morning who had been trying to buy breakfast for her son. Perhaps Micah was asleep now, one arm thrown over a blanket while his mother packed for another shift or sat on the edge of the bed doing arithmetic with money that still did not stretch. He passed near City Hall and thought of Denise getting home with pain still in her body and maybe one warm meal inside her instead of none. He passed the route that could have led toward Rittenhouse and thought of Adam sitting alone somewhere with his phone in his hand, finally writing the message that told the truth instead of negotiating around it. He passed spaces that opened toward the hospitals and thought of Eric and Marissa in rooms where time had become medical and strange, each hour watched differently than in normal life. He passed the invisible line leading toward South Philly and held Leon and his family in prayer once more.

When he reached Penn’s Landing and the wider dark of the river again, the city behind him had settled into that late-hour rhythm where motion continues but with less disguise. The noise was lower. The wind off the water carried a clean cold edge. A few people still walked the path. A man smoked near the railing and looked out at nothing. Two friends stood shoulder to shoulder talking in low voices that sounded like confession. Farther off, a cyclist passed with a blinking red light and was gone. The bridges burned with electric color above the dark water. Jesus kept walking until he found a quieter place near a bench and a patch of open view where the river could be seen without interruption.

There, as the day had begun, he turned toward prayer.

He did not pray as someone escaping the world he had just walked through. He prayed as someone carrying it fully. The woman with the tired eyes in the market. The child leaning against his mother before school. The man ashamed of the father he had been becoming. The sister whose love had grown sharp from repeated disappointment. The daughter still deciding whether to trust the sound of her father’s voice again. The exhausted brother in Kensington who loved someone he could not rescue by force. The frightened woman sitting outside a hospital with too many regrets crowding the living hour. The widower in the carryout place learning that loneliness was testimony to long love. The teenage boy on the stoop waiting between violence and silence. The city itself with its old stones and transit lines and row houses and cracked sidewalks and polished towers and hospitals and shelters and schools and kitchens and all the private prayers rising from bedsides and buses and bathrooms and park benches and prison bunks and crowded apartments and empty ones.

The river moved, and the lights trembled on it. Behind him Philadelphia breathed in thousands of rooms at once. Jesus bowed his head.

In the quiet, he prayed for the people who did not know how to pray anymore. He prayed for those who were too angry, too ashamed, too numb, too busy, too skeptical, too wounded, or too tired to form a clean sentence toward heaven. He prayed for the ones who thought their lives had narrowed too far to matter. He prayed for the hidden mercies already moving in places no one would post about or celebrate. He prayed for courage to tell the truth where silence had become a trap. He prayed for tenderness to survive in people who had learned hardness as a means of survival. He prayed for sons returning, for daughters protected, for marriages facing what was true, for addicts not to call fatigue the end, for overworked souls not to mistake relief for destruction, for the grieving not to confuse emptiness with the end of love, for children who had become old too soon, for caregivers, transit workers, cleaners, nurses, cooks, janitors, teachers, delivery drivers, cashiers, caseworkers, maintenance men, security guards, clerks, and all the others who keep a city standing while carrying private burdens no one sees.

And as he prayed, the day did not conclude with neatness. Philadelphia had not become simple. No city ever does. There were still arguments behind closed doors. There were still people using, lying, hiding, trembling, mourning, and waiting. There were still systems too cold and rooms too lonely and streets too sharp. But something true had moved through the city that day. Not spectacle. Not performance. Not the kind of story people tell to flatter themselves. Something quieter and stronger than that. A man had gone to his daughter instead of into the night. A frightened daughter had asked whether he was staying. A grieving brother had carried his sister toward one more chance at life. A frightened daughter in a hospital had chosen presence over anticipatory sorrow. A burdened worker had done the next honest thing instead of drowning in all the later things. A boy on a stoop had called for help before anger made the decision for him. A widower had been reminded that the ache in his house was not proof of failure, but the shape left by faithful love.

This is how redemption often enters a city. Not all at once. Not with noise large enough to satisfy pride. It enters by refusing to overlook the person everyone else has learned to step around. It enters by telling the truth without humiliation. It enters by making room for honesty where people have only been performing roles. It enters in kitchens and waiting rooms and sidewalks and hospital chairs and cramped row houses and transit stations and markets before breakfast. It enters through one clear sentence given at the right moment by someone calm enough not to need control. It enters when a life that has been drifting decides not to drift one more day.

Jesus remained there in prayer until even the small sounds around him had thinned. At last he lifted his head. The river was still dark. The city was still there. Mercy had not erased reality. It had met it. That is what love does when it comes from heaven into an actual place. It does not float above the human scene. It walks the streets, hears the voices, feels the weather, sees the hidden wound, speaks plainly, stays calm, and keeps moving with quiet authority until someone who thought they were forgotten begins to understand that they were seen all along.

Then he rose from the place of prayer and stood for one more moment with the wind off the water touching his face and the city behind him full of sleeping and waking souls. Philadelphia remained what it was, wounded, beautiful, restless, burdened, stubborn, and loved. And somewhere within it, in more than one room now, hope was still awake.

Your friend, Douglas Vandergraph

Watch Douglas Vandergraph inspiring faith-based videos on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@douglasvandergraph

Support the ministry by buying Douglas a coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/douglasvandergraph

Financial support to help keep this Ministry active daily can be mailed to:

Vandergraph Po Box 271154 Fort Collins, Colorado 80527

Lydia's Weekly Lifestyle blog is for today's African girl, so no subject is taboo. My purpose is to share things that may interest today's African girl.

This week's contributors: Lydia, Pépé Pépinière, Titi. This week's subjects: Fresh Greens for Growth, Luxury fashion becomes luxury food? Early make up? and Dubai

---

Fresh Greens for Growth: Green, the colour of growth and renewal, is making its mark in corporate Accra this year. From lush emerald to mint and olive, green represents balance, harmony, and freshness. Whether you’re walking into a client meeting or prepping for a conference call, green will not only boost your confidence but also symbolize your growth as a professional. Why it works: Green is a colour that radiates calm yet commands attention. It’s subtle but impactful — perfect for the modern corporate woman. Style tip: Go for an olive green jacket with tailored trousers or a soft mint blouse with a fitted skirt. Pair with gold jewelry for a classy, polished finish. Powerful Purples & Reds: Purple is synonymous with royalty, while red represents strength and confidence. Together, they create a palette that demands attention. A powerful combo in any corporate setting, purple tones (think amethyst and lavender) can add sophistication, while fiery red can bring an energizing, bold statement to your look. These colours are perfect when you want to make a lasting impression, whether you're presenting a proposal or leading a team. Why it works: Red and purple are assertive, magnetic colours that draw people in. They’re not afraid to make a statement, and neither are you. Style tip: Try a deep purple blouse tucked into a high-waisted pencil skirt or trousers. Add a red handbag for an extra pop, or rock a full red dress with purple accessories for a truly regal effect. So, whether you're building your empire or climbing the corporate ladder, remember: your wardrobe is one of your most powerful tools. Make sure it reflects the dynamic, fearless, and creative woman you are! Let me know — which of these colours are you most excited to try out in your own corporate wardrobe this year? Luxury fashion becomes luxury food? In their quest to collect more money from the rich the big names like Belmond, which is owned by LVMH have already diversified into luxury hotels and luxury nostalgic trains. Dior, better known for fashion and perfumes has now opened a Michelin star restaurant, (the opening comes first, and if you are good Michelin may award you 1, 2 or 3 stars) following trailblazers Gucci and Chanel. The restaurant is called Monsieur Dior and is situated in the 8th arrondissement of Paris, next to Gallerie Dior. It is managed by Yanninck Alléno, who already manages another 18 star restaurants, so he seems to be good at it. Prices of course are a bit up, the potato puree with caviar goes for 1290 GHC, the salad Catherine for 350 GHC, a sole fish in butter costs 860 GHC, and calf fillet ticks 750 GHC. Taxes and service included, no games here. Do reserve a table, monkeys play by sizes. The aim of course is to get 3 Michelin stars, then the same sole fish will go for anywhere between 1600 and 2600 GHC. Hurry up, the sole season in Ghana ends at end of April…

Early make up? Throughout the world the effect of social media on the youth is being scrutinized with several countries imposing a minimum age of 15 or 16 years old and schools banning smartphones. Sweden, which in 2009 changed books for computers in schools is presently also making a U turn, and Meta (Facebook and Instagram) just had a fine of 375 million USD in New Mexico (State in the USA) and 6 million in California for knowingly addicting children to social media. Tiktok was sued earlier on. Yeah, grab them early. But this article was about make up? Yes, in Italy the authorities are taking a very close look at Sephora and Benefit. Both owned by LVMH (which also owns Bulgari, Celine, Dior, Fendi and Givenchy). Sephora is a big beauty retailer, selling 340 + different brands of make up and skin care products and fragrances through its 2000+ shops. The suspicion is that their covert marketing strategies target girls as young as 10 years old, fueling an unhealthy skincare and anti aging obsession called cosmeticorexia. These make up addicted kids are now nicknamed Sephora kids. It is known that almost all make up products contain dangerous chemicals, and especially young skins are more sensitive. And imagine what happens in Ghana where anything at all is imported, some product even without a brand name.

Dubai. There’s a saying that Kentucky Fried Chicken and iPhones are responsible for a load of juvenile pregnancies. We could add Dubai, the magic city. Why? Apart from the current troubles there, which have now made any trip there risky, what is then the magic of Dubai? Magic indeed is that in the middle of the desert sand they have managed to create a big financial and trading hub, complete with greens lawns, irrigated with desalinated sea water. And apart from that? Lots of hotels and shopping malls and eateries, and expensive playgrounds. So why do we all want to go there? Not so long ago a Ghanaian needed a visa for about any country apart from the Ecowas states, even South Africa and Kenya were beyond reach. Enter Emirates Air and a big advertising campaign, and finally we could leave Africa. At the cost of an iPhone, hotel included. But things have changed now, Ghanaians can travel without real visa hassle to 54 countries like Cape Verde, Gambia, India, Ivory Coast, Liberia, Singapore and others. Personally I would prefer Morocco or a Kenya safari, or India with it’s 22 official languages and 44 Unesco World Heritage sites (France has 53, Morocco 9, Kenya 8 and Dubai has none). All for the price of an iPhone. Take KFC tonight and dream.

Lydia...

Do not forget to hit the subscribe button and confirm in your email inbox to get notified about our posts.

I have received requests about leaving comments/replies. For security and privacy reasons my blog is not associated with major media giants like Facebook or Twitter. I am talking with the host about a solution. for the time being, you can mail me at wunimi@proton.me

I accept invitations and payments to write about certain products or events, things, and people, but I may refuse to accept and if my comments are negative then that's what I will publish, despite your payment. This is not a political newsletter. I do not discriminate on any basis whatsoever.

 

Eighty thousand people walked into a room, metaphorically speaking, and told one of the world's most prominent artificial intelligence companies exactly what frightens them. The question now is whether anyone on the other side of the screen was genuinely listening.

In December 2025, Anthropic opened its Claude chatbot to a sweeping conversational experiment. Over one week, 80,508 users across 159 countries and 70 languages sat down with an AI-powered interviewer and answered open-ended questions about what they wanted from artificial intelligence, and what kept them awake at night. The result is what Anthropic calls the largest multilingual qualitative study on AI aspirations ever conducted. It is also, depending on how you read the data, either a roadmap for the industry or a warning siren.

The findings landed with a paradox at their centre. The features that draw people to AI are the same features that terrify them. Productivity gains? Yes, please, said 32% of respondents who reported AI had already helped them work faster. But 22.2% named job displacement and economic anxiety as a primary fear, while 21.9% worried about losing their autonomy and agency. Perhaps most striking was the 16% who expressed concern about losing the ability to think critically; a fear of cognitive atrophy that suggests people are not merely worried about their livelihoods, but about their minds.

This is not an abstract policy debate. It is a massive, real-time expression of ambivalence from the very people who are already using the technology. And it lands at a moment when the gap between what AI companies say and what the public feels has never been wider.

The Light, the Shade, and the Space Between

Anthropic branded the study “Light and Shade,” a title that captures the contradictory landscape the data reveals. On the light side, 67% of respondents held a broadly positive view of AI. The top three aspirations, professional excellence at 18.8%, personal transformation at 13.7%, and life management at 13.5%, accounted for 46% of all responses. People were not asking AI to do their jobs. They wanted it to handle the repetitive, soul-draining tasks so they could focus on strategy, creativity, and, quite simply, leaving work on time. Time freedom itself ranked as the fourth most cited aspiration at 11.1%, followed by financial independence, societal transformation, and entrepreneurship.

But the shade is thick. Unreliability topped the list of concerns at 26.7%, ahead of both job fears and autonomy worries. The fifth major concern, cited by 15% of respondents, was the absence of adequate regulation and unclear accountability when things go wrong. On average, each respondent voiced 2.3 distinct concerns. Only 11% said they had zero fears about AI. The remaining 89% carried a mixture of hope and dread that defies the neat narratives preferred by corporate communications departments.

Regional differences added further complexity. Users in Sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America expressed 10 to 12% lower rates of negative sentiment compared with those in Western Europe and North America. In emerging economies, AI is framed less as a threat and more as a “capital bypass mechanism,” a way to start businesses without the traditional infrastructure of funding, hiring, and physical premises. The vision of AI for entrepreneurship resonated most strongly in Africa, South and Central Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America, where respondents described AI as a way to circumvent the capital barriers that have historically prevented economic participation. In East Asian markets, by contrast, the fear of cognitive degradation ran notably higher, with 18% expressing concern about cognitive atrophy and 13% worried about loss of meaning, a culturally distinct set of anxieties compared with the West's emphasis on regulatory concerns.

When asked whether AI had already taken steps towards their goals, 81% of respondents said yes. Productivity gains came first at 32%, but unmet expectations came second at 18.9%, ahead of cognitive partnership at 17.2%, learning support at 9.9%, and emotional support at 6.1%. That nearly one in five respondents reported that AI had failed to meet their expectations is itself a data point worth pausing on. The technology's most enthusiastic adopters are already encountering its limits, and that experience is shaping their anxieties about the future.

The study has limitations that deserve acknowledgement. Its 80,508 respondents were all existing Claude users, not a random cross-section of humanity. Self-selection bias is real. But the sheer scale, the linguistic diversity, and the open-ended methodology give it a weight that smaller, more structured surveys often lack. And its findings are remarkably consistent with independent research from institutions with no commercial stake in the outcome.

A Perception Gap Wide Enough to Drive a Data Centre Through

If Anthropic's study tells us what users feel, a constellation of other research tells us how dramatically those feelings diverge from the boardroom consensus.

In late 2025, nonprofit organisation JUST Capital, in partnership with The Harris Poll and the Robin Hood Foundation, surveyed corporate executives, institutional investors, and the American public about AI. The results exposed a chasm. Roughly 93% of corporate leaders and 80% of investors said they believed AI would have a net positive impact on society within five years. Among the general public, that figure dropped to 58%. On productivity, the gap was even starker: 98% of corporate leaders believed AI would boost worker productivity, compared with 47% of the public.

Nearly half of Americans surveyed by JUST Capital expected AI to replace workers and eliminate jobs outright. Only 20% of executives shared that expectation. Flip the lens: 64% of executives said AI would help workers be more productive in their current roles. Just 23% of the public agreed. On the question of how AI profits should be distributed, the public favoured spreading gains across lower prices for customers, workforce support for displaced workers, and investments in safety and security. Investors, predictably, believed the majority of gains should flow to shareholders.

The safety spending divide was equally revealing. Roughly 60% of investors and half of the public said companies should spend more than 5% of their total AI investment on safety. Meanwhile, 59% of corporate leaders said spending should be capped at 5%. When the people building AI want to spend less on safety than the people using it, the trust implications are difficult to overstate.

Pew Research Centre has been tracking American sentiment on AI with growing urgency. In a June 2025 survey, 50% of US adults said the increased use of AI in daily life made them feel more concerned than excited, up from 37% in 2021, a 13-percentage-point increase in roughly four years. Only 10% said they were more excited than concerned. More than half, 53%, said AI would worsen people's ability to think creatively. Fifty per cent said the same about forming meaningful relationships. More than 56% of the public expressed extreme or very high concern about AI eliminating jobs, more than double the 25% of AI experts who shared that level of worry. On the question of whether they trusted the US government to regulate AI effectively, Americans were nearly evenly split: 44% expressed some trust, while 47% had little to none.

The partisan dimension is worth noting. Pew found that nearly identical shares of Republicans and Democrats, 50% and 51% respectively, said they were more concerned than excited about AI's growing use in daily life. This bipartisan unease represents a notable shift; in previous years, Republicans had been consistently more concerned. The convergence suggests that AI anxiety has transcended the familiar left-right divides of American politics.

The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer added an international dimension. Trust in AI ranged from 87% in China and 67% in Brazil down to 39% in Germany, 36% in the United Kingdom, and just 32% in the United States. Three times as many Americans rejected the growing use of AI (49%) as embraced it (17%). In the UK, 71% of the bottom income quartile felt they would be left behind rather than realise any advantages from generative AI. Two-thirds of respondents in developed nations believed business leaders would not be fully honest with employees about the impact of AI on jobs. Edelman also found a significant class divide within the workplace: only one in four non-managers regularly used AI, compared with nearly two-thirds of managers, suggesting that the benefits of AI are accruing unevenly even within organisations.

The Stanford Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence Institute's 2025 AI Index Report confirmed a global trust paradox: countries with the highest AI investment and the most advanced AI ecosystems expressed the most scepticism about AI products and services. In the United States, only 39% of people surveyed believed AI products were more beneficial than harmful, compared with 80% in Indonesia and 83% in China. Confidence that AI companies protect personal data fell globally from 50% in 2023 to 47% in 2024.

These are not marginal findings from obscure polls. They represent the most comprehensive body of public opinion data on artificial intelligence ever assembled, and they all point in the same direction: the public is significantly more worried about AI than the people building it believe them to be.

Warnings from Within the Cathedral

What makes this moment unusual is that some of the loudest warnings are coming from inside the industry itself. Anthropic's chief executive, Dario Amodei, has been remarkably blunt for a man running a company valued in the tens of billions for its AI technology. In May 2025, Amodei warned that rapid advances in AI could eliminate up to 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, potentially pushing unemployment to 10 to 20%, the highest rates since the Great Depression.

“We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming,” Amodei told CNN. “I don't think this is on people's radar.” He proposed a “token tax” requiring AI companies to contribute 3% of revenues to government redistribution programmes to compensate displaced workers, a suggestion that, as he freely acknowledged, ran against his own economic interest. By September 2025, Amodei had doubled down on his warnings, telling CNN that AI was advancing “very quickly” and had already begun replacing jobs. He noted that Anthropic tracks how people use its AI models, currently about 60% for augmentation and 40% for automation, with the latter growing.

Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman went further in early 2026, telling the Financial Times that AI would automate most professional tasks within 12 to 18 months, including work performed by lawyers, accountants, marketers, and project managers. “I think that we're going to have a human-level performance on most, if not all, professional tasks,” he said, specifically referring to work where people are “sitting down at a computer.” He pointed to software engineering as evidence the shift was already underway, noting that many software engineers were now using AI-assisted coding for the vast majority of their code production.

Not everyone in the industry agrees. At VivaTech 2025 in Paris, Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang offered a sharp rebuttal to Amodei's predictions. “I pretty much disagree with almost everything” Amodei says, Huang told the audience. His argument rested on historical precedent: “Whenever companies are more productive, they hire more people.” Huang also took a pointed swipe at Anthropic's positioning: “One, he believes that AI is so scary that only they should do it. Two, that AI is so expensive, nobody else should do it. And three, AI is so incredibly powerful that everyone will lose their jobs, which explains why they should be the only company building it.”

The clash between Huang and Amodei captures the industry's internal schism with unusual clarity. One camp insists AI will create more jobs than it destroys, citing historical patterns of technological change. The other argues that the speed and scale of AI advancement makes historical analogies unreliable, that this time genuinely is different. Both positions carry real consequences for how the public's concerns are addressed, or dismissed. And as one commentator observed of the broader dynamic, “the people making the most aggressive predictions about AI wiping out white-collar work are the same people selling the tools to do it.” That does not make them wrong, but it does raise questions about the line between warning and marketing.

The Layoff Ledger

The debate might feel more academic if it were not for the numbers already appearing in employment data. According to outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, nearly 55,000 job cuts in 2025 were directly attributed to AI, out of a total 1.17 million layoffs, the highest level since the pandemic year of 2020.

In the first two months of 2026, the pace accelerated. Artificial intelligence was cited in 12,304 US job cuts announced between January and February, representing 8% of the layoff total during that period. A March 2026 working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research, based on the Duke CFO Survey of 750 US chief financial officers, found that 44% of firms planned AI-related job cuts this year. When extrapolated across the broader economy, that amounts to approximately 502,000 roles, roughly a ninefold increase from 2025.

The headline layoffs tell their own story. In February 2026, Jack Dorsey's fintech company Block announced it was cutting approximately 4,000 employees, roughly 40% of its workforce, explicitly citing AI. “Intelligence tools have changed what it means to build and run a company,” Dorsey wrote to shareholders. “A significantly smaller team, using the tools we're building, can do more and do it better.” Block's share price surged up to 24% on the news. The market's reaction was instructive: investors celebrated the human cost of AI-driven efficiency with the same enthusiasm they might greet a new product launch.

Amazon eliminated 16,000 corporate roles, with leadership explicitly citing AI and automation as drivers. Atlassian cut 10% of its workforce. Meta was reportedly planning to cut 20% of jobs. These are not struggling companies desperately cutting costs. They are among the most profitable technology enterprises in history, and they are telling the world that AI allows them to do more with fewer people.

The impact falls disproportionately on the young. Workers aged 22 to 25 in the most AI-exposed roles saw a 6% drop in employment from late 2022 to September 2025. Software developers in that age bracket experienced an almost 20% decline from their late-2022 peak. Among 20 to 30-year-olds in tech-exposed roles more broadly, unemployment has risen by nearly three percentage points since early 2025. Workers aged 18 to 24 are 129% more likely than older workers to fear AI could make their jobs obsolete, and 49% of Generation Z job seekers believe AI has already diminished the value of their university education.

The Duke CFO Survey's co-author, John Graham, cautioned against catastrophic interpretations. The projected 502,000 job losses represent just 0.4% of approximately 125 million US roles, “not the doomsday job scenario that you might sometimes see in the headlines,” he told Fortune. But for the workers in that 0.4%, particularly those at the beginning of their careers, the statistics offer cold comfort. And as a February 2026 Fortune report noted, thousands of chief executives admitted that AI had produced no measurable impact on employment or productivity at their firms, resurrecting the productivity paradox that economist Robert Solow identified forty years ago: organisations can see AI everywhere except in the productivity statistics.

The Reskilling Promise and its Discontents

The standard corporate response to AI displacement anxiety follows a well-rehearsed script: we will retrain workers for the jobs of tomorrow. OpenAI published its “AI at Work: Workforce Blueprint” in October 2025 and convened labour leaders in Washington, DC to discuss the technology's impact on jobs and skills. Chief executive Sam Altman, speaking in Chennai in February 2026, called for “policies that help people adapt to these changes, including lifelong learning and reskilling programs.” The company is reportedly developing a jobs platform and certification programme, with secondary reporting suggesting a goal of certifying up to 10 million Americans by 2030. OpenAI is also collaborating with North America's Building Trades Unions to accelerate data centre construction, committing funding to union training and recruitment initiatives.

The rhetoric is appealing. The execution is another matter entirely. A 2025 PwC survey found that 74% of workers were willing to learn new skills or retrain entirely to remain employable, but access to affordable training remains a barrier, particularly in developing economies. PwC's Global AI Jobs Barometer found that workers with advanced AI skills earn 56% more than peers in the same roles without those skills, creating a powerful incentive to upskill, but also a widening gap between those who can access training and those who cannot.

Deloitte's 2026 State of AI in the Enterprise survey found that the most common organisational response to AI talent strategy was educating the broader workforce to raise AI fluency, cited by 53% of companies, followed by designing and implementing reskilling strategies at 48%. But as workforce researchers have repeatedly observed, most enterprise reskilling programmes fail to deliver because they treat learning as something separate from work. When employees must choose between doing their job and doing their training, the job wins every time. The reskilling programmes that actually work start with a task-level skills assessment, understanding exactly which tasks are being automated, which are being elevated, and which entirely new categories are emerging.

The structural problem runs deeper still. Harvard researcher Rachel Lipson has noted that workforce development in the United States remains “chronically underfunded compared to peer nations,” despite no shortage of innovative training models or motivated workers. The gap between corporate reskilling promises and government investment in workforce infrastructure suggests that the burden of adaptation is being quietly shifted onto the workers least equipped to bear it.

There is also a fundamental tension in the reskilling narrative. If AI can automate entry-level tasks, and the industry's own leaders say it will do so within one to five years, then retraining workers for AI-adjacent roles only works if those roles exist in sufficient numbers and remain resistant to further automation. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025, which drew on surveys of more than 1,000 leading global employers, projected 170 million new roles created and 92 million displaced between 2025 and 2030, a net gain of 78 million jobs. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation's December 2025 analysis offered a more optimistic assessment, finding that through 2024, AI's job creation effects were outpacing its displacement effects, primarily because the AI boom generated significant employment in data centre construction, hardware manufacturing, and AI development itself. Construction jobs exposed to the data centre build-out increased by 216,000 since 2022. Whether this infrastructure-driven job creation can absorb the white-collar workers being displaced remains the central uncertainty of the decade.

Governance, Regulation, and the Question of Who Decides

The European Union's AI Act represents the most ambitious attempt yet to regulate artificial intelligence comprehensively. Its phased enforcement timeline began with prohibited AI practices taking effect in February 2025, followed by general-purpose AI transparency requirements in August 2025, with the bulk of remaining obligations due by 2 August 2026. Penalties for non-compliance are severe: up to 35 million euros or 7% of global annual turnover for the most serious violations.

But regulation alone cannot bridge the trust deficit revealed by the survey data. The Edelman Trust Barometer found that people place greater confidence in business than in government to use AI responsibly; across five markets surveyed, only 34% of respondents were comfortable with government's use of AI, compared with 46% for business overall and 56% for their own employer. Employees are 2.5 times more motivated to embrace AI when they feel their job security is increasing rather than decreasing. In the United Kingdom and the United States, two in three AI distrusters feel the technology is being forced upon them.

The JUST Capital survey found that 56% of the American public did not think companies should determine AI standards on their own, with majorities favouring co-regulation involving government, industry, universities, and civil society. In the United States, 73.7% of local policymakers agreed that AI should be regulated, up from 55.7% in 2022, according to the Stanford HAI AI Index. Support was stronger among Democrats (79.2%) than Republicans (55.5%), though both registered notable increases. The strongest backing was for stricter data privacy rules (80.4%), retraining for the unemployed (76.2%), and AI deployment regulations (72.5%).

What the public appears to want is not a choice between corporate self-governance and heavy-handed state regulation, but a model in which multiple stakeholders share responsibility. The EU AI Act, with its requirement that each member state establish at least one AI regulatory sandbox by August 2026, gestures toward this approach. Whether it will prove sufficient remains deeply uncertain, particularly given that the European standardisation bodies CEN and CENELEC have been unable to develop the required technical standards within the original timeline.

The Listening Deficit

Return to the original question: are the companies building AI actually listening? The evidence suggests a complicated answer.

Anthropic's decision to conduct the 81,000-person study in the first place represents a form of listening that few competitors have matched. The company's willingness to publish findings that include substantial criticism of AI, including fears about dependency, cognitive degradation, and economic displacement, suggests a genuine interest in understanding user sentiment, not merely managing it. Amodei's repeated public warnings about job displacement, however self-serving critics may find them, place Anthropic in the unusual position of sounding the alarm about the very product it sells.

But listening and acting are different things. Anthropic continues to develop increasingly capable AI models, including systems that can work independently for nearly seven hours. The company tracks usage patterns showing a gradual shift from augmentation, where AI assists human workers, to automation, where AI replaces them. Currently, approximately 60% of Claude usage falls under augmentation and 40% under automation, but the latter is growing. Acknowledging a problem and accelerating the technology that causes it is a particular kind of cognitive dissonance.

The broader industry picture is less encouraging. The JUST Capital data showing that 98% of corporate leaders believe AI will boost productivity, against 47% of the public, suggests not a listening problem but a hearing problem: executives receive the information and discount it. The Harvard Business Review reported in November 2025 that leaders assume employees are excited about AI, and they are wrong. The Edelman finding that “someone like me” is on average twice as trusted as a chief executive or government leader to tell the truth about AI suggests that top-down corporate communications about AI's benefits are falling on increasingly deaf ears. Employees want to feel that their embrace of AI is voluntary, not mandatory; in the UK and the US, two in three AI distrusters feel it is being forced upon them.

There is also the matter of incentive structures. Block's share price soaring 24% after announcing AI-driven layoffs of 4,000 people sends an unmistakable signal to every public company: the market rewards efficiency gains, regardless of human cost. When Goldman Sachs economist Joseph Briggs says “the big story in 2026 in labor will be AI,” and projects that 6 to 7% of workers could be displaced over a decade-long adoption cycle, the framing remains fundamentally economic. The 81,000 voices in Anthropic's study were talking about something different. They were talking about meaning, agency, cognitive independence, and the fear that the tools designed to liberate them might instead diminish them.

What Real Listening Would Look Like

If the industry were genuinely responsive to the concerns raised by its own users and the broader public, several things would need to change.

First, companies would need to move beyond the rhetoric of reskilling and invest directly in workforce transition infrastructure, not as a public relations exercise, but as a core business obligation. Amodei's proposed token tax of 3% of AI revenues directed toward displaced worker support represents one model. Whether a voluntary industry fund or a mandatory levy, the principle of producers bearing responsibility for displacement costs has precedent in industries from mining to pharmaceuticals.

Second, transparency about automation rates would need to become standard practice, not an occasional research publication. If companies know how much of their AI usage is augmenting human work versus replacing it, that data should be disclosed regularly, with the same rigour applied to financial reporting. The Anthropic study's 60/40 augmentation-to-automation split is valuable precisely because it is rare. Making such disclosures routine would give workers, policymakers, and the public the information they need to prepare.

Third, governance structures would need to include genuine public representation, not merely expert advisory boards populated by academics and industry insiders. The JUST Capital finding that the public wants AI profits distributed across lower prices, workforce support, and safety investment, rather than concentrated in shareholder returns, represents a fundamentally different vision of AI's purpose than the one currently driving corporate strategy.

Fourth, the industry would need to take the fear of cognitive dependency seriously, not as a communications challenge to be managed, but as a design challenge to be solved. The 16% of Anthropic's respondents who worried about losing the ability to think critically were articulating something profound: a suspicion that convenience and capability come at a cost that has not been honestly accounted for. Building AI systems that explicitly preserve and strengthen human cognitive skills, rather than gradually replacing them, would require a different approach to product design, one that prioritises human flourishing over engagement metrics.

None of these changes would be easy. None of them are inevitable. And therein lies the deeper lesson of the 81,000-voice study. The public is not anti-AI. Sixty-seven per cent of Anthropic's respondents viewed the technology positively. They are using it, benefiting from it, and simultaneously afraid of where it is heading. They are, in the study's own framing, living in the light and the shade at once.

The question is whether the companies that have collected this extraordinary data will treat it as a genuine mandate for change, or as another data point in a quarterly report. If the industry's response to 81,000 voices expressing fear about dependency, displacement, and diminished cognition is to build faster, automate more, and promise reskilling programmes that chronically underfunded governments cannot deliver, then the answer to the original question is clear. They heard the words. They simply chose not to listen.

---

References and Sources

1. Anthropic, “What 81,000 People Want and Don't Want from AI,” published March 2026. Available at: https://www.anthropic.com/81k-interviews

2. JUST Capital, in partnership with The Harris Poll and Robin Hood Foundation, “AI Sentiment Survey,” published December 2025. Reported by CNBC, 9 December 2025.

3. Pew Research Center, “How Americans View AI and Its Impact on Human Abilities, Society,” published September 2025. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/how-americans-view-ai-and-its-impact-on-people-and-society/

4. Pew Research Center, “What the Data Says About Americans' Views of Artificial Intelligence,” published March 2026. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/12/key-findings-about-how-americans-view-artificial-intelligence/

5. Pew Research Center, “Republicans, Democrats Now Equally Concerned About AI in Daily Life,” published November 2025. Available at: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/11/06/republicans-democrats-now-equally-concerned-about-ai-in-daily-life-but-views-on-regulation-differ/

6. Edelman, “2025 Trust Barometer Flash Poll: Trust and Artificial Intelligence at a Crossroads,” published November 2025. Available at: https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer/flash-poll-trust-artifical-intelligence

7. Stanford Human-Centred Artificial Intelligence Institute, “AI Index Report 2025: Public Opinion Chapter.” Available at: https://hai.stanford.edu/ai-index/2025-ai-index-report/public-opinion

8. World Economic Forum, “Future of Jobs Report 2025,” published January 2025.

9. Fortune, “CFOs Admit Privately That AI Layoffs Will Be 9x Higher This Year,” published 24 March 2026. Reporting on NBER working paper based on Duke CFO Survey.

10. CNN Business, “Why This Leading AI CEO Is Warning the Tech Could Cause Mass Unemployment,” Dario Amodei interview, published May 2025.

11. CNN Business, “Anthropic CEO: AI Is Advancing 'Very Quickly,' Could Soon Replace More Jobs,” published September 2025.

12. Fortune, “Microsoft AI Chief Gives It 18 Months for All White-Collar Work to Be Automated by AI,” Mustafa Suleyman interview, published February 2026.

13. Fortune, “Nvidia's Jensen Huang Says He Disagrees with Almost Everything Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Says,” VivaTech 2025 coverage, published June 2025.

14. CNN Business, “Block Lays Off Nearly Half Its Staff Because of AI,” published February 2026.

15. Fortune, “Thousands of CEOs Just Admitted AI Had No Impact on Employment or Productivity,” published February 2026.

16. Challenger, Gray & Christmas, AI-related layoff data for 2025 and early 2026, reported across multiple outlets.

17. OpenAI, “AI at Work: Workforce Blueprint,” published October 2025. Available at: https://cdn.openai.com/global-affairs/f319686f-cf21-4b8e-b8bc-84dd9bbfb999/oai-workforce-blueprint-oct-2025.pdf

18. PwC, “Global AI Jobs Barometer 2025.”

19. Deloitte, “State of AI in the Enterprise Survey 2026.”

20. Harvard Business Review, “Leaders Assume Employees Are Excited About AI. They're Wrong,” published November 2025.

21. European Commission, “AI Act: Regulatory Framework for Artificial Intelligence.” Available at: https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/policies/regulatory-framework-ai

22. Lloyd's Register Foundation and Gallup, “World Risk Poll 2024: Resilience in a Changing World.”

23. Ipsos, global AI sentiment surveys conducted in 2022 and 2024, as reported in the Stanford HAI AI Index 2025.

24. Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, AI job creation analysis, published December 2025.

---

Tim Green UK-based Systems Theorist & Independent Technology Writer

Tim explores the intersections of artificial intelligence, decentralised cognition, and posthuman ethics. His work, published at smarterarticles.co.uk, challenges dominant narratives of technological progress while proposing interdisciplinary frameworks for collective intelligence and digital stewardship.

His writing has been featured on Ground News and shared by independent researchers across both academic and technological communities.

ORCID: 0009-0002-0156-9795 Email: tim@smarterarticles.co.uk

I have ordered parts from AliExpress, this is getting to become a thing…

In my previous post I was talking about how I ordered a solar-power node and was looking forward to setting that up on my roof to act as a repeater. Since then I've gotten that going, expanded my collection of gear, and learned some lessons.

Discord / Other Sites

People in the MeshCore public chat sent me an invite to the MeshCoreAus Discord. This is the social hub of enthusiasts from around Australia, and has people interested in all the parts of this network. Some people are into tracking the data on the Internet (via MQTT bridges), some people are into wardriving to map out signal reliability, some people are really into building the gear in the smallest way/lightest way/whatever restrictions they've given themselves. There is an extreme amount of knowledge there, and everyone I've seen chat is friendly. A rare thing in an online community.

The discord has a resources channel, which really opened my eyes to other information channels. Mainly:

• Eastmesh and their sub-sites. Of particular note: a live traffic view got announced yesterday and it's beautiful. xJARiD (developer of the site) recommended turning on both “Matrix” and “Rain” modes as a bit of a Matrix-y treat.
• MeshCoreAus Wiki has some useful information to people trying to understand the layout and standards of the network. I particularly found [ENT] Node Names really useful to identify what kind of stuff I was talking to.
• VK3TWO's shopping spreadsheet is extremely dangerous. It is super useful, but with all the links to AliExpress and the costs/recommendations given, you start getting ideas... It's an amazing resource. NB: The spreadsheet goes through different versions and the links to the spreadsheet may change so it's always best to get the most recent version from the discord post.

So, the community feels extremely healthy. Watching the chatter on the network, I am just one of many that have joined recently and are helping it grow quickly.

The Repeater

Once my SenseCAP Solar Node P1 Pro arrived, I got to flashing it with OTAFIX and MeshCore right away. The process went smoothly, as expected. OTAFIX, I discovered, is a fix to the bootloader that allows you to update the firmware over the air; no more having to plug it into the laptop to give it updates. This is extremely handy when the device is on your roof and you don't like the roof (more on that later). The OTAFIX installed cleanly (I used the update-xiao_nrf52840_ble_bootloader version of the release) and then flashed MeshCore on it using the standard MeshCore flasher. It got the latest version of the firmware (1.14.1), and I also flashed my companion device at the same time.

My neighbour has an old flatbed ute backed onto the corner of my property, so I was able to get on the back of that and set the device on the roof to see how it performed, and the answer is: well! I was suddenly seeing more messages. Anywhere I went in the house, my companion device was giving me better coverage. I was able to compare what I saw via the companion device to what I saw on the discord version of the public/#ping/#test channels.

So, the next step was to get the repeater onto my TV aerial/antenna. I asked my neighbour to borrow his ladder, and he left a standard upsidedown-V shaped one out on the flatbed of the old truck for me. A couple days later it was nice and dry and I decided to get up there and get the thing mounted. This was a bad idea.

On the bed of the truck, I built the attached mounting gear that came with the SenseCAP. Then I opened the ladder and put it on the bed of the truck and started climbing. Due to the height I only had to go up it a bit over halfway up the ladder to then transition to the roof, but it was still took me a minute of working up the nerve. Eventually I did get up there, though, and I was able to slowly shuffle my way to my aerial. I started attaching the strap and gear to the aerial and I realised the strap thing they give in the kit was made for a much larger pole diameter than my aerial used. Someone long ago had welded some square shaped bracket things about halfway up the pole, though, so I figured I could make the strap as tight as possible by myself, then let it rest on the top of the bracket things, so they take the weight and if the strap isn't perfect, that's fine.

my neighbour catches me setting up the repeater

I got the repeater hooked up, took a quick glance at my phone and everything seemed OK.. so I started heading back towards the ladder. This is where the fear really set in. I made it to the very edge, but of course, getting back on the ladder is the hardest part. I was sitting up there, uncomfortably trying to shift my weight around and figure out how I was going to do this, when a familiar sensation came over me. I was sweating but cold.. my body was shaking.. I felt like I needed to spew. I was having a full blown panic attack! I had told no one I was doing this.. what happened if the ladder shifted when I tried to put my weight on it? Why did I set it up on the back of a ute that can move up and down too? This was a terrible idea, why did I even try this? What will I do? Should I call someone? Am I just trapped? Around and around my mind went, spiralling until I was about die. I am not made for roofs.

I have had panic attacks before, and have talked myself out of bad trips before, so I just tried to break the cycle.. I tried to think about the walk I did with my dog earlier in the day. I tried to admire the beautiful weather and view. I took notice of what cars were driving by on the road nearby. I focused on taking deep breaths. Anything to make my mind stop spiralling and let my body come down (emotion wise, not fall off the roof wise).

I don’t know how long I was up there on the edge.. 20 minutes maybe? I know it was a while, but finally my body started to come down. Eventually I could think about my situation and not spiral, and I came up with a plan on how I’d get back on the ladder. It worked. I made it. I got off the ladder and onto the back of the ute and just stood there letting the adrenaline finish coursing through my body. I made it. I went inside and drank a bunch of water. I came back out to clean up my stuff and… that’s when I spotted it. I had hooked up the repeater to the aerial, but as part of setting up the mounting gear, I had to detach and re-attach the antenna for the device. I forgot to re-attach it. Now, there are warnings everywhere about running your device without an antenna attached. Apparently you can fry the radio inside, making it “deaf”, but that wasn’t on my mind at the moment. I was just kicking myself that I set up a repeater that couldn’t talk to anything. There was no way in hell I was getting up on that roof again though.

I spoke to my neighbour (a builder and a firey with the cfa) and he had absolutely zero problems going up there and attaching the antenna to the device for me. He made it look so easy….

It was only after everything was re-attached that I remembered that “don’t run a device without an antenna” thing, and mine ran for 24h like that. Doing [some reading](https://old.reddit.com/r/meshcore/comments/1pggezm/have_i_been_really_stupid/), it seems like running the device without an antenna can push all the transmit power back into chips that don’t expect it. Symptoms will be the device being totally “deaf”, or slowly going deaf over time. My repeater isn’t totally deaf, so I guess I’ll just have to keep an eye on it and see if I start losing data. These transmissions are (I think) low watts.. so maybe my stuff will be OK? We will see. If I have to get up there and replace that thing, though.. ooooohhhh boy will that be something. Might have to buy the neighbour a 6-pack…..

More Devices!

In addition to my normal companion device, I got interested in two other things: something smaller to take with me, and an MQTT device. For both of these, I bought pre-made things so, like the repeater, I have something known good before I start trying to make my own things and have to debug stuff. I also looked at that Google Docs link above, the one with all the info (and aliexpress links) from VK3TWO. So I am also starting to get into the DIY side too. I’ll quickly cover what I got and issues/thoughts:

Tag

I was interested in a more mobile device than my WisMesh Pocket companion. The companion is good, but with the antenna on it, it’s kind of a pain to carry around. There looked to be two main options for this: A SenseCAP Card Tracker T1000-E for Meshtastic and a WisMesh Tag, The Pocket-Sized, Compact Meshtastic Tracker. These are both vaguely credit card-shaped devices with no screens, but bluetooth, gps, and the LoRa radio gear inside. The WisMesh Tag has a bigger battery, so I went with that. It works great. It’s able to get stuff from my repeater no worries — in fact it's become my primary device. My WisMesh Pocket is still around and talking, but I haven't switched to it in the last day. They are different devices on the network (nannou and nannou-tag), so it's not like they share one “account” or anything like that.

The tag doesn't do well when driving around, but that's expected I think. Once we stopped driving it was able to pick up local repeaters and send/receive some data.

MQTT Device

This one was disappointing. I just assumed everything that runs Meshtastic also had MeshCore firmware for it too, but not the WisMesh WiFi Gateway Wireless MQTT Gateway for Meshtastic. At least, not in the normal firmware flasher. I still need to search around.. I think I should be able to get this to work, it might just involve some manual firmware flashing and stuff, which is fine, because that’s the next aspect I want to get into anyway.

AliExpress Gear

One particularly popular brand in the MeshCore community is Heltec, but I've largely been playing with RAK wireless-based stuff. For something to play with, I got a couple Heltec v4 kits. One with GPS and one without. I also got a couple sx1262 modules and a bunch of antennas.

All arrived in good condition from AliExpress, but I haven't played with any of it yet.

Community

As I said before, the AusMeshCore seems healthy, and growing. There's people in the discord and in the Public chat talking about where they can put new repeaters to extend range. There's people that check in on the Vic chat from Tasmania (yes, the mesh extends across the Tasman!) and NSW. It's a fun time!

One thing that doesn't get mentioned much, although a user (Esh) in the chat has a copy/paste response for people that they're starting to use to help, is what channels are available on the mesh chat. There's the Public channel that most everyone is hooked up to, there's private channels (no idea if those actually get used), and then there's various other public hashtag based channels. From what I can tell, your device basically tags your message with the hashtag somehow, so other people following that hashtag are able to see it in a seperate channel, otherwise it gets ignored when it gets to another device.

Anyway, in the interest of helping people find new places to converse, here are some of the ones I've discovered, either from Esh or from other people mentioning them in the chat. Note this is specific to the Victorian mesh network, but I assume some of the common ones are on other networks too:

Testing/Debug:

• #ping – say ping, and if the bot hears you, it will respond with a hop count/route. This is on Discord so you can see it there too.
• #test – more open, sometimes people will respond to tell you they got your message, sometimes they won’t. If you definitely want a response, ask for it in your message. This is on Discord so you can see it there too.
• #meshbot – A more full-featured bot. Type ‘help’ in the channel to get the bot to list what commands you can use. ‘multitest’ is popular (lists different paths to you)

General:

• #politics – I think people from all ranges of politics are on here, so it’s interesting. Everyone seemed to agree Albo’s recently “everything is OK, don’t panic” national address was a bit of a joke though.
• #jokes – Speaking of jokes, soooooooo many puns and dad jokes are in here. You can tell what the primary user of this technology is. I love it.
• #electronics
• #space
• #motorcycles
• #random

Location-based:

• #geelong
• #gippsland
• #bendigo
• #ballarat

Those are the ones I’ve seen mentioned, but I imagine there are ones for other areas too.

Conclusion 2

I’m still loving this. I find in the evenings I’m checking the public chat similar to the way I’m looking at my discord or matrix chats. It’s a fun community.

The roof experience was bad. That’s one horse I don’t think I’m going to get back up on. Maybe if I had a better/proper ladder.. or maybe just a 10m long ramp so I can just easily walk up and down to get to the roof like normal 😉. After an hour, I was still shaking badly.. it wasn’t a fun time.. but I survived.

My next steps are to look at the MQTT gateway to see if I can get that working and reporting back to eastmesh, and to play with the AliExpress gear. I also need to get my 3d printer re-leveled and printing again so I can print some cases for the stuff I’m going to build.

Onwards!

In Summary: * Relaxing now to easy listening music for a few hours after a quiet Good Friday. Plans for the rest of this evening include surfing the socials then the night prayers and an early bedtime.

Prayers, etc.: * I have a daily prayer regimen I try to follow throughout the day from early morning, as soon as I roll out of bed, until head hits pillow at night. Details of that regimen are linked to my link tree, which is linked to my profile page here.

Starting Ash Wednesday, 2026, I've added this daily prayer as part of the Prayer Crusade Preceding the 2026 SSPX Episcopal Consecrations.

Health Metrics: * bw= 227.74 lbs. * bp= 145/85 (66)

Exercise: * morning stretches, balance exercises, kegel pelvic floor exercises, half squats, calf raises, wall push-ups

Diet: * 06:30 – 1 ham sandwich * 07:30 – 1 peanut butter sandwich * 09:15 – snacking on air-popped popcorn * 12:45 – Mongolian beef lunch plate, fried rice * 16:10 – 1 fresh apple

Activities, Chores, etc.: * 04:30 – listen to local news talk radio * 05:20 – bank accounts activity monitored * 05:45 – read, write, pray, follow news reports from various sources, surf the socials, nap, * 10:00 – watching MLB Central on MLB Network * 12:45 to 13:45 – watch old game shows and eat lunch at home with Sylvia * 14:00 – Listening to The Good Friday Solemn Liturgical Action, according to the 1962 Roman Missal on Pelican+ * 15:00 – now following the Texas Rangers vs the Cincinnati Reds MLB Game * 17:35 – and the Reds win 5 to 3. * 18:00 – listen to relaxing music

Chess: * 16:30 – moved in all pending CC games

#002332 – 17 de Outubro de 2026

Antes de adormecer resolvo o cubo 5x5x5 que ofereci ao meu sobrinho. O que tenho em casa está partido. Ainda no campo das metáforas nerd, a minha vida familiar continua feliz e equilibrada enquanto na minha vida pessoal há peças que não encaixam, outras estão partidas.

For this is the best thing anyone has ever gifted me:

Paula, my granddaughter, was seven years old when what I’m about to tell happened. She had always been very clever and lively since she was little. She observed everything around her quietly, with those honey colored eyes of hers, absorbing everything.

She calls me “Li,” since she was a baby, a short for “groseli,” an affectionate variation from the swiss-german word for grandmother. The word entered into our family since my father Lorenz came from Zurich. Her name “Paula” honors my father’s favorite sister, who went to war as a nurse and never came back.

Paula and I always got along very well. We share so many affinities. We talk a lot about what happens in her world and in mine, things that, in one way or another, matter to both of us.

I have fun with her quick thinking and her ability to understand things so easily, which often leaves me astonished. For weeks she had been reminding me: — “Li, it’s been so long since we’ve been to great grandma’s cemetery. Not even once since Christmas!”

I used to take her there to decorate her great grandparents’ grave, because she loves bringing them flowers and arranging them on the small plot. — “That’s true,” I replied, surprised by her memory. “But I think you mean ‘grave,’ not ‘cemetery,’ right?” — “Yes, Li. Are we going to decorate it or not?”

Since an important date for her great grandparents was coming up and it had been raining nonstop for days, I told her we should wait a little longer so we could prepare everything nicely for my parents, so their grave would look beautiful on their day. She agreed.

As we live far from each other, Paula asked me to let her know when the day came and “not forget to take her with me!”.

Her contact with my mother had been very brief. She never met her great grandfather, and when she was just four, my mother passed away. Yet, from that short time of occasional visits, Paula kept affectionate and respectful memories of a very old, fragile great grandmother to whom we devoted so much care and tenderness.

Paula loves her mother, my daughter Julia, very much, and she respects everything she is taught.

I remember the day when my daughter and I came back from my mother’s burial.

Paula offered me her bedroom so I could “rest.” She had noticed my sadness, that I was crying and withdrawn. She came close to me, gently, wanting to comfort me, telling me not to be sad because her mother had told her that great grandma had gone to join great grandpa in heaven. She stroked my hair and kissed me, trying to console me in her delicate way.

Her sensitivity amazed me. In her young mind, she must have imagined how painful it is to lose your mother. She understood my pain and tried to ease it with her innocent affection, so pure and sincere. Since then, she goes to the cemetery with me whenever possible.

Interestingly, my daughter never joins us on these “visits.” She cannot accept the tradition, somehow, it brings her distress. She refuses to follow it but does not impose her feelings on her children. I realized how difficult it was for her even to come to my mother’s burial. She is very sensitive, and I respect her way of feeling. Paula knows it too, yet she simply follows her own nature.

On the promised day, I went to pick her up, already carrying a bouquet of flowers. Paula immediately asked: — “Can I carry the flowers?” And off we went. She sat in the back seat, holding the bouquet tightly in both little hands, completely focused. After a while she asked: — “Great‑grandma will like them, right?” — “Yes, she will love them,” I replied.

As we approached the cemetery, she wanted to know in which section the graves were in. Surprised, I answered that I had actually never paid attention. And she, in a scolding tone, said: — “But Li… YOU don’t know?”

We arrived. As soon as I opened the car door, she ran off with the flowers toward the grave. The place is beautiful, slightly elevated, surrounded by large leafy trees. I let her arrange the flowers, because she feels very important doing so. She placed them carefully, perfectly, and then watered them. She always knows exactly what to do.

During one of her trips back and forth with the watering can, she found the sign marking the cemetery sections and came to tell me: — “Look, Li, your mother is in section C. Have you learned it now?” Then I asked her: — “I’ve learned. And do you think it looks nice?”

She quietly stepped back about five steps, hands on her little hips, examined it with great conviction, and answered: — “It looks very beautiful, Li.”

With her eyes turned toward the sky, as if looking for something, in a mix of worry and anticipation, she whispered facing up: — “Great‑grandma, are you seeing us from up there? We took so long to come… You were waiting for us, weren’t you? But now I know you’ll be happy.”

Marianne Fouquet Horwatitsch