Grab your journal and make a list of the things your friends do that give you the feeling of being valued and connected. Then list the things that you do to demonstrate your commitment to your friends. Are there things you can do more of? Have you ever asked a friend what actions they appreciate the most as a demonstration of caring and dedication?

John Macdonald (1741–96), a Scottish Highlander, was a famous footman who wrote memoirs of his experiences in service. An orphan who had been sacked from a previous job rocking a baby’s cradle, Macdonald found work in a gentleman’s house turning the spit. He was aged just five.

He had occupied her thoughts since the first time she’d laid eyes on him. Feeling so vulnerable the night of Sarah’s ordeal, she’d been attracted to his self-assurance and physical stature. And in all the time she’d known him, never once had he taken advantage of her momentary weakness. He was kind to her boys and respectful to her, never mocking h

In the past, I felt like I needed to protect my time more so that I could do things that I wanted, and it obscured the fact that what I wanted was a sense of connection and meaning, and in order to get that I would have to do something that looked like giving my time away. - Jenny Odell

You can’t touch music—it exists only at the moment it is being apprehended—and yet it can profoundly alter how we view the world and our place in it. Music can get us through difficult patches in our lives by changing not only how we feel about ourselves, but also how we feel about everything outside ourselves.

Meche grabbed a cassette and began listening to Serú Girán singing Canción de Alicia en el País, about the dictatorship in Argentina. She had reached the part where the walruses have vanished

I remembered again two clear sounds, the penny whistle at the beginning of the bombardment, the bird singing at the end of it. Between these two sounds there showed a chink of light through which I could see the start of a more hopeful life, a future in which the courage of people could also be used for their greater happiness and well-being. The n

On television I caught glimpses of the heroes of the Black Power movement. Muhammad Ali, Stokley Carmichael and Yuri Kochiyama were all preaching about the condition of black people, and Angela Davis was still regarded as the most dangerous person in the USA.