I don't know who you are or what you're going through today. But I know life is hard. Damn hard. I know that it breaks you, then mails you a bill.

Somewhere outside Montgomery, Alabama—a gas station. A young girl stands in line. She has long woven hair. In her hands: a soda bottle and a bag of chips.

In front of her is an older gentleman. He has weathered skin, ratty clothes, and work boots.

He tells the cashier he wants twenty-dollars worth of gas. He hands his cash over.

“This ain’t twenty,” says the cashier. “It’s only fourteen bucks.”

The girl steps forward. “Here,” she says, laying a five on the counter.

The man tells the girl he can’t accept money from a little kid.

The girl ignores him.

The cashier rings him up, the girl returns her soda and chips to the shelf. Before the girl leaves, she high fives the man.

He smiles and almost ruptures a cheek.

“God bless you,” he says.

Alpharetta, Georgia—his wife cheated on him and ended up pregnant. She left him and moved in with her lover.

Her lover turned out to be a piece of work—he ditched her. She had her baby alone.

A few hours after she gave birth, the girl called her parents. They

refused her—for religious reasons. A few of her friends did the same.

So, she called her ex-husband. He answered his phone. She expected him to hang up. He didn't.

In fact, before they finished talking, he had already piled into his car and pointed it toward the hospital.

He held her new baby, he kissed it. And years later, that kid still calls him “Daddy.”

Mobile, Alabama—her father committed suicide when she was sixteen. She had three brothers, and a mother who was mentally ill.

And a mortgage.

She got a job to support the family. She worked long hours, then came home to cook suppers. She was a child-mother.

Long after the girl’s brothers left home, she cared for her elderly mother until she died. The girl never married.

She made it to eighty.…

Yeah. I know. This world isn’t all rainbows, roses, and ice-cream shops. It’s a hard place to live. People are angrier than they used to be. Money gets harder to come by. So do smiles.

Sunset. A high-school graduation. Students in caps and gowns take the football field. I’ve lost my wife in a crowd of parents and teachers.

There’s a woman next to me. She is old, curly white hair. She is missing teeth. Her accent sounds like hard work.

Granny points to the field. “That’s my Robbie,” she tells me. “First in our family to graduate high school. Told him since he was born, ‘You can become anything when you grow up.’”

She is so proud, her buttons are under strain.

The announcer calls Robbie’s name. Granny claps so hard she almost fractures a wrist.

“That’s him,” she says. “Can you see my Robbie?”

Yes’ ma’am.

A shopping mall—a young woman. Her son is the size of a sixth-grader. She holds him on her hip.

“Will you PLEASE take him, honey?” she says.

Her husband is a skinny man with tattoos. He places the kid in a large stroller. The kid starts bawling.

The man wheels the stroller in circles, making airplane noises.

The kid quits

fussing and smiles. He hollers something along the lines of:

“Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!”

The man stops and kisses the kid’s forehead.

“I love you,” he says.

A gas station—a man is walking toward the door. He is wearing basketball shorts and knee-length surgical stockings. There are stitches on his shaved scalp.

A kid out front stabs out a cigarette and opens the door.

When Basketball Shorts shuffles back outside, the young man is waiting. He helps him into his car—a white Ford. He pumps the man’s gas. They talk. They even laugh.

The Ford drives away.

The kid is left, standing at the pump, waving goodbye.

The…

...If you’ve read this far, you might as well know that I believe in something. I don’t know what it’s called, exactly, but I know it’s out there. And I know it's good.

Tallahassee, Florida—he was homeless. Long beard, weathered skin. I was sitting in traffic. He walked between lines of vehicles at the stoplight. He carried a cardboard sign. I rolled down my window and handed him all the cash I had—which wasn’t much. Maybe fifteen bucks.

He smelled like an open bottle.

He stood at my window and said, “I don’t know you, but I love you.”

Those words. I’ve thought about them for days. I thought about them when I drove past an ambulance this morning. Two cars looked like crushed Budweiser cans. Traffic backed up for a mile. EMT’s loaded a stretcher.

One paramedic was hugging a child in the median. The kid squeezed him and cried his eyes out. The EMT squeezed back. I’ll bet they don’t teach that in EMT training.

Here’s another:

After my friend’s wife died, he adopted a cat. It didn’t take long before he’d spoiled the animal rotten. He bought toys, an outdoor pet-bed, a food bowl, a collar.

The next morning, he woke to see three feral cats on his porch. So, he

did what any self-respecting man would. He named them.

The following day; two more feral cats.

“I went from being lonely,” he said, “to being Doctor Freaking Doolittle. Cats just trust me.”

Last week, I met an old man who sat at the bar of a rundown beer joint. He was watching the band play. He was deaf. In a loud voice, he asked if he could buy me a beer. I accepted.

He told me he’d totally lost his hearing a few years ago. He woke up one morning and he was fully deaf. His life changed. It forced him to retire early. It’s been hard.

Last year, his nine-year-old granddaughter begged him to attend her school concert. He showed up with a sour attitude.

For the school’s final musical number, one hundred and twenty elementary students sang…

It’s high-school culinary teachers who give a damn. It's neighborhood barbecues. It’s animal shelters. Old folks. It's volunteer uncles who live in spare bedrooms.

Colton, Texas—they moved Holly’s mother to a nursing home. It was time.

Her mother couldn't recognize her friends or family. She'd forgotten names. Dates. Hygiene.

They placed her in a place they could afford—which wasn't much.

Holly asked her daughter’s boyfriend to visit the center with his guitar.

“I'd heard music could stimulate brain stuff,” she said.

It didn't work. What happened was a group of patients in wheelchairs gathered around the boy's singing. They made requests.

He played for several hours.

“He really got into it,” she said. “It meant so much to me.”

And when he played “You Are My Sunshine,” Holly’s mother wandered into the seating area.

The old woman sat in a chair. She sang along with the others, word for word.

When the music ended, she looked at her daughter and said, “Oh, there you are, Holly.”

“Hey Mama.”

Jacksonville, Florida—an at-risk school. He wasn’t a good high-school student. In fact, he was failing. But he liked food and cooking. His English teacher discovered this.

She bribed him.

“I told him, ‘If you study your butt off, I’ll teach you how to cook.’”

Deal.

She started an after-school culinary program in a local church. She got a restaurant chef to volunteer some of his time. Six local kids signed up for class.

“It was great,” she said. “Everyone had so much fun. It kinda gave us something to look forward to.”

It gave them more than that. Today, four of those students are working in commercial kitchens.

Arthurtown, South Carolina—Jason was single. Young. A CPA. He drove a quick car, he stayed out late. But standing at his brother-in-law’s graveside changed everything.

His sister’s husband died, leaving his sister with four kids. She was a mess.

“I had a job to do,” Jason said. “I just knew it. Those kids needed somebody. My sister needed me.”

He quit his job. He moved across the country…

It’s all around us—whatever you call it. I suppose it's always here, hanging in the air like potpourri my mother would make on the stovetop.

Cracker Barrel, 8:17 P.M.—it's busy tonight. There’s a boy in a wheelchair at the table beside me. His father is spoonfeeding him cooked apples.

When the boy's sister says something funny, the boy claps and laughs.

His father wipes his face with a rag and says, “You’re my special boy.” Then, he kisses his forehead.

A nearby girl wanders toward the boy. She is four, maybe. Her hair is in dreadlocks. She stares at him with her hand in her mouth.

“Is he okay?” she asks.

The boy leans and gives a big “HELLO!” There are apple bits on his chin.

The girl gives a smile brighter than a Christmas tree. “HI THERE!” she says in return. Then, she skips off.

Three tables from the boy is an old man. He is wearing a ball cap, Velcro shoes. He’s sitting at a two-top. He orders chicken-fried steak and potatoes. He has no cellphone to occupy his attention. No reading material. He sits.

He and I share a waitress. Her name is Blanche—it’s embroidered on her apron. Whenever he speaks

to her, he holds her hand. Something you don't see much.

He has a voice that sounds genteel enough to predate the War Between the States. It's a wonder he's all alone.

Behind him is a table of Mexican workers—men, women, and kids. They sit covered in paint and grit. They speak rapid Spanish. Lots of laughing.

One Mexican boy crawls into his mother's lap. She strokes his silk hair with her paint-spotted hand, saying, “Cariño mio,” over and over.

And though I don't know Spanish, I imagine this, more or less, means: “You're my special boy.”

To their left: a teenage couple. He weighs a buck ten, she is a foot taller than him. They hold hands when they walk out. They kiss. They look drunk on each other. What a feeling.

When I pay my tab, Brooke is my…

Listen, you have no reason to trust someone like me—I'm an average fool with a mortgage and a high-mileage truck. But so help me, this place is more than sex, drugs, and politicians.

Pensacola, Florida—downtown, early evening. He had a long beard and smelled awful. He sat on the sidewalk strumming a broken guitar.

A young girl stopped and asked, “Can I sing with you?”

The homeless man said, “What'cha got, honey?”

Without hesitation, the girl sang “This Little Light of Mine."

This drew a crowd. A big one.

Afterward, the man hugged the girl, and her parents. He told her she reminded him of his own daughter.

Then he cried.

Folks filled his guitar case to the brim.

Forest Park, Georgia—a Burger King, a bad part of town. She wore a gray hotel-maid uniform, standing in line with her toddlers. She counted quarters and dimes on the counter.

Later, when she found a seat, a few teenagers asked the cashier. “Do y'all sell gift cards?”

“Yes," the cashier said, "We have Crown Cards."

They placed wads of twenties on the counter. “We'd like to buy a card for that woman, would you give it to her?”

Then, they left.

Mobile, Alabama—a man at the bar next to me had his face in his hands. His clothes

were covered in paint. The bartender asked him what was wrong.

He said, “My wife's car broke down. It's our ONLY car, and my phone JUST DIED!”

His face busted wide open.

The bartender asked if he knew where the car had broken down.

"Yeah,” he said. "At my wife's school, she's a teacher. I just need someone to give me a ride."

The bartender said, "I can do better than a ride, honey. My brother owns a towing company."

She clocked out early.

This morning, I turned on my television. And I'm sorry I did. Because the America on my screen was not the place I know. On TV: rapes, suicides, stabbings, mushroom clouds, sex scandals, and senseless acts of politics.

Reporters in eight-hundred-dollar outfits talk about mass-murders while wearing half-smiles.

Listen, you have no…

The truck was ugly, painted gray to hide rust. The bumpers were missing, the interior smelled like oyster stew.

It was a classified ad in one of those nickel newspapers. It read:

"Gray Ford. Half-ton. Stick-shift. Some rust. Needs TLC. Sneads, Florida. $800."

My pal called about it. He needed a truck in a bad way. His old one had gone to be with Jesus, his wife was pregnant, and he'd just lost his job.

And in the days before texting, the only way to do business was to use the interstate.

Before we left, he went to the bank. He liquidated his account into a wallet-full of eight hundred dollars.

I gave him a ride. We stopped at a gas station outside Cottondale. He filled my tank, then paid inside. He bought two sticks of beef jerky, two scratch-off lottos.

Thoughtful.

After a two-hour ride we hit a dirt road leading to a farmhouse that sat on several acres of green. Out front: an old man, smoking. He was bony, friendly-faced, tall.

The truck was ugly, painted gray to hide rust. The bumpers were missing, the interior smelled like oyster stew.

“Runs good,” the man said.

“I'll take it,” my buddy answered.

He reached for his wallet. And that's when it happened.

His pocket was empty.

My friend went nuts. He retraced his steps. We tore apart my truck, dug through seats, and cussed. When he finally gave up, he sat cross-legged on the ground. He cried until his face looked raw.

The elderly man sat beside him. He wrapped his arms around him. It had been a long time since a man had done that sort of thing to my pal. He was a fatherless orphan, like me.

When things calmed down, the man's eyes were red and puffy. He wiped his face and said, "C'mon, son, nothin's THAT bad."

My pal didn't answer.

The elderly man removed keys from his pocket and placed them in my friend's hand.

He said, "Listen, that thing's gonna need an…

I'm a person who believes in something. In miracles. Small ones I've seen with my own eyes. In people.

Freeport, Florida—my friend found a car stuck in a muddy ditch on a secluded road. It had just rained. The ground was soft. The thing was buried up to the bumpers.

It was full of Mexican women who didn't speak English. My pal asked if they needed help—he happens to speak fluent hand-gestures.

All they could say was, “Please, yessir, thank you.”

They were a cleaning crew. Each of them had taken turns digging around the tires. Their uniforms were covered in mud. They had wet eyes.

My buddy strapped the vehicle to his hitch. It wouldn't budge. He tried everything. No luck. So, he called some friends with trucks who lived nearby.

I was one such friend.

Three of our trucks lined up, side by side. We strung tow ropes to the vehicle, then hit the gas at the same time. Seven strangers, eight shovels, two Chevies, one Ford, and many years later...

My pal married one of those girls.

Quincy, Florida—Walmart. An elderly woman in the checkout aisle. She didn't look good. She walked with a bent

back, hunched shoulders, and carried a cane.

A manager helped her unload the cart. Then he paid her bill. A girl waiting in line videoed the whole thing on her cellphone.

The manager said to the girl, “Please turn off your camera, this doesn't belong on Facebook. Show some respect, please.”

She put the camera away.

Then wrote me a letter about it.

Jonesboro, Georgia—he used to be a preacher. A good one. Then he had a wreck. It damaged his back. He got hooked on painkillers and whiskey.

The church fired him. He lost his wife, kids, and ambition. Which made him drink more.

One day, the church janitor showed up on his doorstep. He treated the former pastor to breakfast. Together, they ate too much bacon, drank too much coffee, and laughed too much.

He showed up again the…

Don't get me wrong, this thing isn't always petunias and soap bars. This thing can be hard as nails. Sometimes, it causes the greatest pain you'll ever feel. Even so, it's a pain worth feeling. Don't ask me why. I don't know.

It's too big to write about. But, I'm not going to let that stop me. That's because it's a pretty big thing I'm referring to. The biggest.

Jaden owes his very life to this thing.

Jaden was an abandoned infant born with crack-cocaine in his bloodstream. After his mother's arrest, he was adopted by Claire—sixty-eight-year-old single woman who heard about his situation through a friend.

Claire said, “I know I ain't got forty years to give'im like some young couples, but I'm a good mama, he can have every year I got left.”

Consequently, this "big thing" is the same thing that killed Bob Cassidy.

First, it compelled Cassidy to pull over on Highway 10 to change a woman's tire. A car struck him. It killed him on impact.

I know what you're thinking, "What a senseless tragedy." It wasn't senseless. All thanks to this thing we're talking about.

This thing also prompted Betty to adopt three rescue dogs from a kill-shelter. She brought them home and turned them loose on her twenty-acre farm.

“That's when it hit me,” she said. “I knew had enough room for lots'a dogs.”

So she drove back and adopted several more. Then a few more. Soon, the shelter started giving them to her.

Folks thought Betty was nuts. But she's not. She only looks that way to people who don't know about this thing—which often makes normal folks look like their a few bricks short of a load.

Don't get me wrong, this thing isn't always petunias and soap bars. This thing can be hard as nails. Sometimes, it causes the greatest pain you'll ever feel. Even so, it's a pain worth feeling. Don't ask me why. I don't know.

Something I do know:

this stuff is the fabric the universe. It's the only real thing out there. It's what makes average people sparkle, and ugly skies look pretty. It gives purpose to death.…

Why am I telling you this? You know why. Because I just shook open my newspaper to see mass-shootings, nudity, and politics on the pages.

Huntsville, Alabama—last year Briana was sick. Real sick. Her adoptive parents took her to the doctor. It was bad. Her liver was shutting down.

“The specialist said that Briana might not make it,” said her mother. "That was tough."

Tough, yes. But Briana, is cheerful to a fault.

She told her parents outright, “You gotta believe, guys.”

They promised they'd try.

Surgeons operated, it was a Band-Aid procedure. Things were bleak. What Briana needed was a transplant. Her adopted parents were not donor candidates.

So her father tracked down Briana's birth mother. The woman came to the hospital the next morning. For the first time since giving birth at age fifteen, she met her cheerful child. I understand many tears were shed.

Anyway, Briana and her birth mother now share a liver.

Jackson, Mississippi—Doug Lasher fell off the back of a truck. He was riding in the pickup bed while his coworker bobbed down the highway. The truck hit a bump, Doug hit the pavement. Two cars struck him.

He survived.

In the hospital, his friends brought so many flowers, the room looked

like a jungle.

Two weeks ago, Doug began responding to stimulation. A few days thereafter, he made his first joke.

He said: “It's a good-frickin' thing I ain't allergic to flowers.”

Good thing.

Yulee, Florida—she was the foster daughter of a seventy-four-year-old couple. A loving duo with big hearts who had fostered over a hundred kids in their day. They adopted her.

They both died a few years later.

So, the girl went to live with the couple's biological son in Tallahassee. Kindness must have skipped a generation.

He made the little girl sleep in the garage on an air mattress. His wife ignored her.

One day at school, the girl's counselor gave her a casual hug. When the woman tried to let go, the girl wouldn't.

The girl remarked, “Please hug me a little longer. It's been…