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“In a 1994 Harvard study that examined people who had radically changed their lives, for instance, researchers found that some people had remade their habits after a personal tragedy, such as a divorce or a life-threatening illness. Others changed after they saw a friend go through something awful, the same way that Dungy’s players watched him struggle.

Just as frequently, however, there was no tragedy that preceded people’s transformations. Rather, they changed because they were embedded in social groups that made change easier. One woman said her entire life shifted when she signed up for a psychology class and met a wonderful group. “It opened a Pandora’s box,” the woman told researchers. “I could not tolerate the status quo any longer. I had changed in my core.” Another man said that he found new friends among whom he could practice being gregarious. “When I do make the effort to overcome my shyness, I feel that it is not really me acting, that it’s someone else,” he said. But by practicing with his new group, it stopped feeling like acting. He started to believe he wasn’t shy, and then, eventually, he wasn’t anymore. When people join groups where change seems possible, the potential for that change to occur becomes more real. For most people who overhaul their lives, there are no seminal moments or life-altering disasters. There are simply communities⏤sometimes of just one other person⏤who make change believable.

One woman told researchers her life transformed after a day spent cleaning toilets⏤and after weeks of discussing with the rest of the cleaning crew whether she should leave her husband.

“Change occurs among other people,” one of the psychologists involved in the study, Todd Heatherton, told me. “It seems real when we can see it in other people’s eyes.”

The precise mechanisms of belief are little understood. No one is certain why a group encountered in a psychology class can convince a woman that everything is different, or why Dungy’s team came together after their coach’s son passed away. Plenty of people talk to friends about unhappy marriages and never leave their spouse; lots of teams watch their coaches experience adversity and never gel. 

But we do know that for habits to permanently change, people must believe that change is feasible. The same process that makes AA so effective⏤the power of a group to teach individuals how to believe⏤happens whenever people come together to help one another change. Belief is easier when it occurs within a community.”

⏤ The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg

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Today I read a quote that says,

"if a goodbye hurts, it means you spent your time well."

So if I ever cross your mind, however brief, I hope it's a passing that lightens your heart with a benevolent smile. And if not, please forgive me...

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Angela Carter, from The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories; “The Erl-King,”

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Velimir Khlebnikov, from The Collected Works of Velimir Khlebnikov; “Lyrics,”

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Lately, I really have to get myself together to say goodbyes to some people I love or loved. Some I never get a chance to see again, some I wish I hadn't met before, some I know we may encounter but not in the same way. Still asking why would it happen. Why does encountering always blooms lovely but then all of this by all means comes to an end eventually?

Knowing that saying goodbye to loved ones is inevitable and still counting the number of them leaving me in each and every milestone in my life really hurts. It hurts me a lot. Being in it while growing up almost takes my breath. Still trying to guess how I can get used enough for this kind of pain. It is not the person or the relationship that I could not move on from, it is the pain that I could never get over. This, indeed, is the trick played by God. I learned that it might be the fate that pulls us together in the first place, but then, it is our minds or how we decide to treat others that leads us to drifting away from them. Choosing to leave or stay is no God's choice at all, most of the time.

For that, I have to say that those who walked out of my life left many of their fingerprints in me and also placed in me a void that has been casting a shadow on my mind. Breaking my heart so many times. Leaving me in tears for ages. Yet, I still want to fight back every time those waves of feelings hit me hard. For some reasons, I can't let it be.

For those who are still there for me, please stay with me a little longer while you can. Your feeling, caring acts, your love truly matter to me.

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Chẳng ai biết lần gặp cuối cùng giữa chúng ta là khi nào...

Có những người muốn gặp phải ngồi máy bay.

Cũng có những người muốn nhìn thấy lần nữa phải ngồi cỗ máy thời gian để quay về quá khứ

[meiheooo]

let me be your coffee

for you won't find anything

tastier than me.

and I promise

to turn your wake up

into a beautiful

sleepless night.

--- h.harouche

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It's my 8 year anniversary on Tumblr 🥳

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"Dĩ nhiên, sẽ tuyệt vời biết bao nếu ta xác định được mục đích hay mục tiêu trong đời và rồi chinh phục được nó. Nhưng mong bạn hãy hiểu rằng dù không đạt được bất cứ thành tựu nào đi chăng nữa, sự tuyệt vời của sự sống cũng vẫn vẹn nguyên.

Chỉ riêng việc "sống" đã có nghĩa là đang đấu tranh với rất nhiều thứ, đang nỗ lực hết sức để bảo vệ chính mình, đồng thời đang thích nghi, hòa hợp cùng thiên nhiên và môi trường xung quanh. Hãy trân trọng sự kiên cường của sự sống!"

- Chỉ sống thôi là đã đủ tuyệt vời | Itsuki Hiroyuki

Artwork by mi_na_ha_mu

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Khổ hạnh, buồn đau, vui sướng nào cũng nhẹ như mây trời.

“ Đến một độ tuổi nào đó, người ta chẳng thể làm gì khác hơn ngoài sự im lặng. Buồn bã cũng im lặng, hân hoan cũng im lặng.

Thi thoảng chỉ muốn ngồi một góc quán quen, thấy khổ hạnh nào rồi cũng nhẹ nhàng như mây trời. ��

- L.Y 1 kitesquotes

Artwork by @mahaoey [IG]

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~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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“𝘈𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘯𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘬𝘦𝘴 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘶𝘱 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘮𝘰𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘯𝘨, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘯𝘰𝘣𝘰𝘥𝘺 𝘸𝘢𝘪𝘵𝘴 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘵 𝘯𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵, 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘯 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘯 𝘥𝘰 𝘸𝘩𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘷𝘦𝘳 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘸𝘢𝘯𝘵. 𝘞𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘥𝘰 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘤𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘪𝘵, 𝘧𝘳𝘦𝘦𝘥𝘰𝘮 𝘰𝘳 𝘭𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘦𝘴𝘴?”

-𝘊𝘩𝘢𝘳𝘭𝘦𝘴 𝘉𝘶𝘬𝘰𝘸𝘴𝘬𝘪

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I wanna tell a story.

So, rewind a little more than a year. I'd just started my new job, which is unimportant to the story apart from the basic nature: I get on the phone with people to help them open financial accounts, and I spend maybe 15-30 minutes helping them do so. It's complex, the computer systems I have to use are finicky, and it's laden down with a lot of bureaucratic red tape.

My very first day live on the job, I was a nervous wreck. There were so many things I needed to keep track of, and I was having to talk to people over the phone for the first time in years, which meant my voice dysphoria was at an all-time high.

Then I got this client. I don't actually recall his name and I couldn't tell it to you even if I did, so let's call him Bob.

Bob was elderly and had lived a hard life. He was transferring the contents of his pitifully small 401k from Walmart into a more accessible account, and I was helping him set that up. He came on the line cranky and more than a little paranoid. He asked me repeatedly if we were going to tell the government about his money, grumbled at me about the information I had to collect to get the account opened, made a few political statements with which I heartily disagreed. It was not a bad call, but I was definitely on edge.

Then it came time to set up a beneficiary on his account -- someone who would inherit the account if he passed away.

And he paused, and then he said, "My daughter."

I asked for her name and date of birth for the listing, and Bob told me. But then he went on.

"I want to tell you about her," he said. "She's very special to me.

"You see, I didn't always have her. Years ago I had a son. And my wife and I, we loved our son so much. He was our perfect boy. We watched him grow up, he made it into college, he got a job. I never went to college, you know? But he did. I was so proud of that.

"Then, one day, he disappeared. Stopped calling, stopped visiting, stopped everything. Six years, we didn't know what had happened to him, if he was alive, if he was dead, nothing. It was..."

He paused there, his voice creaking like it was about to break. I could see where this was going, and I was rapt.

"Then we got a letter," he went on. "From her. She told us everything, explained it all. That she was--" He paused, then said "transgender" as if it were a foreign word that he wasn't entirely sure how to pronounce. "That he'd -- she'd -- disappeared like that because she was afraid of what we'd say. What I'd say. Maybe what I'd do. But she missed us and she wanted us to get to know her as she really is."

He paused there, pretty clearly waiting for my reaction. I said something -- I barely remember what -- about how scary it must have been for her, and how hard for Bob and his wife not to hear from their child for so long.

"It was," he agreed. "But you gotta know this. I love my daughter." He said it with his whole being, with every bit of power and meaning that his thin, aged voice could hold. "I love my daughter, and I'm so proud of her. She's getting married next month, and I thank God for letting me live long enough to walk her down the aisle, just like every girl deserves. She is the light of my life."

At the end of a long, intimidating, tiring day, his fierce love for his trans daughter took my breath away. I'm always going to remember Bob -- remember how he wasn't perfect, wasn't progressive, didn't really know the etiquette or the language, but how deep and intense his love for his daughter was. How he told this to me, a stranger, as though daring me to say even the slightest rude word about her.

There is love in this world. Sometimes, it comes from the people you would least expect. It might not look quite like you think it will. But it is out there.

"I love my daughter," Bob said, intense and emphatic, and I will never forget the sound of his voice.