Sometimes, I get overwhelmed by how much beauty there is in the world. From microscopic, highly geometric creatures, to almost full sapience of our pets, from a plant that can’t tell you when it’s thirsty, to trees too big to hug and, impossible to capture with our eyes nor minds, mountains of incredible magnitude. In that moment I want to breathe it all in. I want to tilt the painting and drink its paint, till it fills me, and never let go, for a moment, then let go.

But also how much beauty there is in humanity and in our ability to be kind, particularly. How, sometimes, we can go miles out of our way just to help someone we might not even know, without expecting anything in return. Expecting, in fact, nothing in return, and at times not even that. Or, suddenly, succumbing to that subtle impulse and tossing the homeless person a coin on passing them the hundredth time. And when it comes to the people we are closest with – our capacity at ingenuity of finding ever new ways to surprise them.

It can be big, like remembering something said late at night, long time ago, to then materialize it one day. Or it can be tiny, like giving a heartfelt smile to a stranger you meet on your path in the morning. And, at times, it can be something you experience and at first think nothing of it at all. Like plain chatting, or sitting on a bench. But as time passes you look back, and you look back fondly.

Sometimes, I get overwhelmed, and it catches me by surprise. The emotions press hard, I lose my breath, my eyes well up, the view goes misty and I laugh and wipe my tears away, but they don’t stop. And I laugh and think – this is absurd, so absurd – and am afraid to drown in those emotions a little, but I allow them to take me, a little.

From displays of impossible solidarity, to heartbreaking passages in text and elsewhere, from considerate strangers to being one, from videos about prime numbers to brown paper packages tied up with strings – that’s what makes me human – my favourite things.