Sasha Chapin • An open letter to 56 people I know

The world would crumble completely absent the quiet, unshowy, unselfish, sustained kindness of people like you.

I know that if you are not unusually hard-working or competitive or smart, you can still distinguish yourself. Be unusual in some other noticeable, likable way—unusually honest, brave, generous, curious, or pleasant. All of these attributes are composed of discrete behaviors that can be learned through practice.

You completely broke my model of what it’s possible for a person to do—it’s one thing to read accounts of the powers of mystics, it’s another to have one directly operate on your consciousness.

Every once in a while, I meet a person who radiates joy. These are people who seem to glow with an inner light. They are kind, tranquil, delighted by small pleasures, and grateful for the large ones. These people are not perfect. They get exhausted and stressed. They make errors in judgment. But they live for others, and not for themselves. They’ve... See more

“If you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we could treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely love more ... See more