Between you & me,
There was a moment in the first month of 2025 when the world felt like it was going to shatter.
On January 31, after weeks of relentless headlines—from the LA fires to a tragic helicopter crash and ICE raids—I found myself asking my mom, “What is next?”
I sat in that helpless feeling for a while, feeling like a shell, hollow inside. As my mother and I absorbed the non-solution based silence, my mind contorted with complexity.
This moment brought me to then confront this raw thought that hit me over the head like a backhanded slap:
I feel selfish for living when others cannot.
I carried out that dread for months, until one day, something shifted. I witnessed a simple act of compassion.
A daughter was on her father’s shoulders like a trophy. He held and guided his little girl’s hands while they served each other a slice of life in my neighborhood, as if they were the only two people in the world.
Instinctively, I knew it was okay to cultivate joy and embrace laughter as a form of resistance to all the oppressive events happening around the world right now.
This sight jolted me back to life. I immediately drove home, ran into my dad’s belly, that’s always filled with laughter. I hugged him as kind joyous tears flooded his forearms as he held me.
That was when I realized: joy is a feeling that interrupts time and change. It breaks through despair and calls us back together.
This Kind Joy is expensive. It’s radically priceless.
Growing up in my 20s in a double standard society that allowed for exchanges of empathy to show itself as a sign of weakness. We’re taught to turn off the news. It’s normal, just keep scrolling. What can you do, right?
We live in a world where being a tolerable human being has simply become the bare minimum where people have normalized being on autopilot, immune to one another’s realities and becoming unfazed—“if an issue doesn’t affect you directly, then don’t worry” mindset.
Like we’re wandering ghosts lost in our own purgatory.
It reminds me of a photo I once saw of a photo of hands stretched upward in protest at the “No Kings” march in downtown LA, holding a cardboard sign that read: When cruelty becomes normal, compassion becomes radical.
The line still buzzes deeply in my chest.
It all starts with a simple act of kindness. You never know what smiling at someone today could do for a person or what an interaction can become. It’s a building brick we’re laying. We’re intentionally taking up space and repairing humanity in small increments—meanwhile, mindfully spreading this rhetoric, this curriculum, this new wave of radicalism.
Make a joke and laugh with a complete stranger. Spark a conversation. Compliment someone walking by you or the person next to you in line. Hold the door open and say, “good morning.” Leave friendly encouraging notes on receipts to waiters and waitresses with their cash tip. That could be the thing that gets them through their shift. Every stranger has a story. You can be that person’s peace and breather from something tough. You can be the sweetest thing they’ve had in a while.
But we’ll never know.
It’s about believing in the intangible aspects of making a difference today, to make it to tomorrow. So, how does one keep peace at a pace?
These acts are a lifeline for our generation’s wisdom.
Joy is resistance and romance is rebellion. Practice courageous love!
Be considerate and have grace for your support system. They need you too. Attend and pay patience to your loved one’s love language, especially in this fluctuating time.
Kindness can mold anyone’s day. You may even walk away, smiling at yourself, feeling pretty good about this interaction.
I like to think of it as clay; we’re just crafting and giving pieces to each other.
Treat people with kindness, simply, with the intention of knowing we’re all trying our best. And maybe right now, that’s good enough.
