"How can you be Icarus when you are the sun?"

I welled up reading this when she sent it. It is the most kind and beautiful thing anyone has ever said to me, and I cherish the memory.

One of my students wrote me a letter on graduation that said he was severely depressed (and I suspect suicidal though he didn’t say it), and my talk with him about why he failed my exam changed his life, because no one had ever told him he was brilliant before. We later worked on research together and he said it was the best time in his life.

We’re still in touch, he’s working on a masters and plans to get a PhD.

I’m so humbled by him, and proud of him.

I’m a Filipina and there was an elderly man in Miami with whom I struck up a conversation.

He was gazing at my face and he said: So this is what your people look like. It’s like all the world combined.

Last year, my (56M) daughter (13F) told me that she thinks if I were her age we'd be best friends.

“I’m not letting you do this alone. I’m coming with you.” - My girlfriend and soon to be fiancé when I had to put down my elderly cat three days before Christmas.

We went to the vet and she watched me bawl, we both cried our eyes out, and even still after that she let me grieve at home for an hour. She brought me a coffee, and everything to make sugar cookies from the store. She came back and she said she couldn’t fix it, but she didn’t want me to be alone.

So we played Christmas music, made terribly ugly cookies, and we weren’t okay; but we were together.

That’s when I saw what real, unconditional love looked like.

Someone once told me, "You make people feel seen." It hit me because it’s easy to go through life unnoticed, but knowing I could make someone feel valued—it stuck with me.