The Ones You Wrote Off

Welcome to The Brighter Side of Everything.

This newsletter serves a simple purpose → To help you build optimism, resilience and a solution-focused perspective.

Each week, I’ll share actionable insights that not only brighten your day but position you to be a leader within your own life and seize life’s opportunities.

Read time: 20-30 minutes.

Hello, Brighter Side readers! ☀️

Big welcome to this week’s newest readers and gracious thanks to those who continue to read along.

This week we're looking at the files we unconsciously keep on the people we meet, and why it's worth reviewing them before we close them for good.

We also meet a man in China who has spent twenty years walking up to strangers and offering a genuine ear on their hardest mornings.

There's also a new album that sounds like gliding over the Andes and we learn about a Swedish word for relaxing and listening to the birds of a morning.

Grab yourself a cuppa and settle in.

See you on the Brighter Side,

Chris

P.S. Please feel free to send me feedback on how I can improve. I respond to every email.

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Ever met somebody and felt like you had them summed up before the conversation ended?

We hear people say this all the time:

“I’m really good at reading people.”

A better term would be I’m really good at judging people.

Maybe they talk over you once or make a comment that lands way off base.

Then, there it is.

We make a snap decision based on an internal judgement.

There’s no announced but from that moment you're unconsciously collecting moments as samples from that person and filing them accordingly.

Everything they do that fits your definition?

Goes into the file, because that’s the type of person we believe they are.

Everything that doesn’t?

Tends to be overlooked.

Because it doesn’t fit the current agenda.

Most people have a few of these files open right now.

Some have many more, often stretching back many years.

What I find uncomfortable is how early this judgement takes place, and how long we usually wait before recalibrating.

Things look very different when you embrace curiosity initially, and allow it to guide you, before forming any judgments.

I've written about this plenty over the last couple of years, and still trying to live up to it.

Because taking the shortcut here asks us to believe something pretty ridiculous.

That somebody can have a poor five minutes, and we use it as evidence of the type of person they are.

We would never expect that of ourselves.

I make mistakes every day.

Small ones mostly, but every so often, an absolute beauty.

I’m yet to meet a person who doesn’t.

Because it’s a standard nobody alive could adhere to.

There's room for error in every interaction we have, and a single instance is an incredibly small sample size to gauge a whole personality from.

Engage with a curious question, asked in good faith, and suddenly we’re dealing with a person once again rather than a verdict.

I don't carry much cynicism within me.

I walk into most situations assuming there's a connection to be made, and far more often than not, there is.

Now and then there isn't, and I've made complete peace with that trade off.

Getting it wrong on occasion costs me very little.

What I receive in return are varied relationships with a depth that those that hover on the surface will never reach.

Before we proceed, let's be clear on one important point.

None of the above means wandering around with your guard down.

Establishing and maintaining your boundaries is crucial, and it’s important to keep your wits about you early on with people, especially those you've just met.

I give second chances as a matter of course but I hand out far fewer third or fourth chances.

When someone makes a mistake, they make a mistake.

When someone shows you who they are, believe them.

When a behaviour stops being a slip and turns into a pattern, I believe it.

I take that as evidence about who a person is and find it works incredibly well as a personal rule.

Exploring this concept this week helped me better observe what it rests on, which is the ability to identify a pattern vs. a bad moment.

It’s a decision that is made by the same mind that's been keeping the files.

This edition was inspired by a recent Big Think column I read written by the behavioural scientist Danny Kenny.

Kenny was on a video call with an executive he calls Marcus, who was explaining everything wrong with a peer named Dev.

In leadership meetings, Dev sat quietly and nodded along.

Then at 11 p.m., an email would land in four inboxes, listing every objection he’d failed to raise in the meeting itself.

Marcus developed his own theory.

Dev was building a paper trail, and he wanted Marcus's job.

So Kenny asked one question.

"Have you asked him about it?"

A long pause.

"Asked him what, exactly?"

Kenny made some notes of the exchange afterwards, feeling quite pleased with himself.

Then, he closed his laptop and drove home frustrated by one of his own colleagues who consistently takes four days to respond to his messages.

He made a decision internally, that this behaviour meant his work wasn't respected, on barely any evidence.

Kenny is a professional who studies this for a living, and even he keeps a file.

In 1971, two psychologists, Edward Jones and Richard Nisbett, gave this habit a name.

The actor-observer asymmetry.

It’s the simple idea that another person’s character explains what they did while our circumstances explain what we did.

Dev sends those late-night emails because he's calculating.

When Marcus sends one, it’s because the day got away from him.

It’s the same behaviour carrying two different explanations and the generous one always goes to whoever is doing the explaining.

For decades the understanding of this asymmetry was treated as settled, until Bertram Malle pooled 173 studies in 2006, and found it mostly doesn't hold.

On the whole, we explain other people about as fairly as we explain ourselves.

With one exception.

Somebody does something we don't like, and it comes roaring back.

We reach straight for their character.

You can watch the same machinery running at full tilt across the global political spectrum, regardless of where you stand.

Behaviour that fits the verdict gets collected and passed around.

Behaviour that says the opposite is actively ignored.

Nobody believes they're the ones doing it.

Everybody can see the other lot doing it.

So the person we feel most certain about is usually the one we've only ever observed at their worst.

Pretty much everything a person says or does is open to interpretation, until you've settled on who they are.

After that it all begins to read as proof, and then the file begins changing the person.

Back in May I touched on the Pygmalion effect, and the idea that a teacher's belief can lift a student.

This operates the same mechanism, just running it the other way.

Consider what Marcus did next.

He stopped looping Dev into early conversations.

Why bring in the man who's building a case against you?

So Dev heard about decisions after they were made, and raised his objections the only way left to him.

In writing.

At night.

To four people.

Every one of those emails hardened Marcus a little further, and every one of them was a reply to being shut out.

Psychologists call this behavioural confirmation.

We treat people according to what we expect of them, and they respond to how they're treated.

So Marcus probably helped to develop the very behaviour he was complaining about.

Dev could still be exactly who Marcus thinks he is, but nobody has checked.

And that’s the point.

There’s a relatively recent study that provides an explaination as to why a closed file tends to remain closed.

In 2010, Detlef Fetchenhauer and David Dunning had people decide whether or not to trust a string of strangers with real money.

Beforehand, they guessed that approximately half would share the winnings.

The actual number was eighty per cent.

Wrong by almost thirty points, with the result occurring in the same direction every time.

Then, the researchers adjusted the variables to uncover further insights.

When people could only find out by trusting first, their cynicism didn't budge.

When they were shown the answer either way, trusted or not, their estimates climbed close to the exact truth.

This concept applies just as effectively beyond the research lab.

Trust someone and you’ll find out if you’re right.

Write them off and that file can sit there uncorrected for years, because those you write off have never had the chance to prove you wrong.

There’s also one further finding I enjoyed reading, probably more than I should have.

Olga Stavrova and Daniel Ehlebracht took the popular belief that cynical folks are sharper than the rest of us and tested it against roughly 200,000 people in 30 countries.

In 29 cases, cynicism aligned with lower scores in literacy, numeracy and problem solving, and on top of that, cynics tend to earn less.

One genuine exception did emerge though, and it's noteworthy.

In the countries where crime rates ran high and generosity ran low, the cynics came out slightly ahead.

So where life is genuinely dangerous, a dim view of people earns its keep.

Most of the situations you and I walk into are not like that.

Suspicion might feel like intelligence at times but the numbers don't agree.

Fairness isn't the only thing at stake in these interactions either.

Everybody I've stayed curious with has known something I didn't, including plenty I disagreed with.

Especially those ones, when I think about it.

Somewhere in recent years we’ve started treating a conversation with someone we disagree with as an endorsement of them.

It isn’t.

And it’s cost us a fortune in things we could’ve learned, perspectives we could better understand and most importantly relationships we could have built.

Lead with curiosity over judgement and you’ll likely discover common ground, gain new insights, and contribute to a culture where diverse ideas and perspectives are valued.

So what do we do with a file we've kept for years?

The obvious move is to try harder to see it from their side.

Nicholas Epley at the University of Chicago ran 25 experiments on exactly that, with Tal Eyal and Mary Steffel.

Considering another person's perspective failed to improve accuracy.

Actually, it made some of them more confident.

Not more correct.

Asking does a job that imagining can't, and Epley calls it perspective-getting.

There's a bonus in it too.

Michael Yeomans, Alison Wood Brooks and their colleagues counted the questions people asked in first conversations and on speed dates.

Those who asked more follow-up questions were better liked for doing so.

Because curiosity reads as interest rather than nosiness.

Kenny suggested Marcus try something like this:

"I've noticed your objections tend to arrive by email at night, and I'd rather hear them in the room. What makes it easier to raise them afterwards?"

Notice the lack of accusation.

Just a question, leaving room for an honest answer.

Kenny says that every time he’s made the effort to ask someone, the reason turned out to be different to his theory.

More often than he'd like to admit, it was something he’d contributed to himself.

Now, please don’t misinterpret what I’m saying, none of this argues a case for endless chances.

Far from it.

Patterns are real, and believing one when you see it reflects as wisdom rather than cynicism.

The point is to ensure you're recognising a genuine pattern.

Rather than fixating on a single moment, making a snap judgment and holding it against someone.

Find your files, then check their date: Ask what the most recent evidence actually is. If it's years old, you’re likely judging based on somebody who no longer exists.

Write an updated story: One that is current and factual rather than based on mental gymnastics. Then sit it beside the first one, so the first stops passing as fact.

Check your own fingerprints: Look at how you've treated them since the file opened, some of what you're seeing may be an answer to your energy.

Ask, then say it back: Repeat what you heard in their words before you offer any of your own, then ask what you've missed.

Leave the bridge standing: Walking away from a pattern doesn't require you to set fire to anything. Distance will keep you safe but demolition costs you every version of that relationship you’ve yet to meet, robbing you of future possibilities.

This can be a heavy topic at times.

When you’re in the moment, it rarely feels like you’re judging somebody.

It feels more like you know what you're talking about.

I've done it plenty over the years, and will probably do it again before the year's out.

Just not intentionally.

What stops me in my tracks is remembering that this path only ever has one author.

In most cases, the people we’ve made our mind up about aren’t told or come to their own defence.

The majority of my writing aims optimism at the future.

This is that same belief, just aimed at a person.

I've got this far without burning bridges, and I promise you I ain’t no saint.

The truth is, I've never been able to see the return on it.

Every bridge you burn takes something with it that hasn't happened yet.

The introduction you'd have been given in four years, or the friendship that needed one more conversation to kickstart.

You’ll never find out what you lost, because it will never arrive.

A closed file works the same way.

You don’t receive a bill for your decision, you just end up living in a slightly smaller world than the one that was previously available to you.

And this runs both ways.

Somewhere out there, I’m sure plenty of folks have an file open on me.

On you, too.

Files based on a rushed reply, a bad day or maybe just a misplaced comment that landed wrong.

I’d certainly want them to consult me before making the final decision to close it.

And if we’re being totally honest?

Everybody we love has said or done something we didn’t like or agree with but we gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Then, they went and earned it back anyway.

So, ask the question before you close the file.

The cost to you is one conversation.

What's on the other side of it might be somebody you'd have been glad to know for thirty years.

Stanford psychologist Jamil Zaki has spent years on this exact question, and his talk on escaping the cynicism trap is twelve minutes very well spent.

Watch it here:

🧠 6 Simple, Science-Backed Ways to Fix Your Broken Attention Span - Our focus has been chipped away by constant digital interruption, but this piece gathers six research-backed ways to win it back, from timing your hardest work to your personal peak hours to listening to alpha-frequency binaural beats and even taking up martial arts. Read more → (Science Focus)

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💬 The Simplest Way to Seem More Likeable, According to New Research - Researchers found that sharing a small personal story does more for how likeable you seem than almost anything else, and curiously, it's the listener's own openness — not the speaker's nerves — that decides whether the moment lands. Read more → (PsyPost)

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More often than not, the good we do lands right in front of us.

You know how it goes, someone drops something as you glide by and you bend down and pick it up and return it to them.

Or you hold steady for an extra couple of seconds to hold a door open for the person walking behind you.

We notice an opportunity.

We do the decent thing, and then we feel better for doing so.

Fair enough.

The world’s social engine runs on the kindness and consideration we show to one another each day.

Generally speaking, the majority of us don't go actively looking for moments where we can make a positive impact.

But, when an opportunity arises, we step up and offer support.

Chen Si, though?

He goes looking.

Chen Si has dedicated plenty of his own time preventing suicides.

He does so without being asked.

And with little training over and above his desire to be both helpful and compassionate.

For over twenty years now, he’s risen early in the morning and headed out to find strangers in trouble.

Every weekend he walks the same stretch of ground.

Offering real support and a genuine ear to those in despair.

His actions have kept hundreds of people alive, earning him recognition and gratitude from those who’ve crossed his path.

Initially, he decided on the words to say via some second-hand Freud books he came across with several of the pages missing.

Even today he'd be quick to tell you he's still not that good at it.

"Although the books had lost some pages, I kept reading them. It built the basis for me to understand people."

During the week, Chen works for a logistics company in eastern China, on a wage of around four thousand yuan a month.

That converts to just under one thousand Canadian dollars.

He grew up quite poor in a farming county where his mother left before he was old enough to remember her.

Leaving him with his father, who was disabled.

This resulted in his grandmother raising him through his formative years.

She was the kind of woman who could talk couples out of their fights.

Once she even stopped a neighbour from drinking pesticide after his recent harvest had failed.

Chen was just eleven at that time, and he was watching.

"I've known how to soothe people since I was a child.” he says.

After leaving school early, he moved to the city in his early twenties.

Despite being cheated out of his wages by a building contractor and experiencing homelessness early on, he eventually found his footing.

Then in 2003, he chose to start giving up a portion of his weekends and has managed to wear out nine electric scooters since.

Nine.

An American radio reporter followed Chen closely in 2006.

They managed to catch him in the act as he was walking up to a young man in dirty clothes.

The man was hunched over, holding a plastic bag.

"I can see your mood's not right. What's the matter?”

No advice and no emotional speech about how much there was to live for.

That’s Chen’s approach.

He asks a clear question, and then stays quiet while they answer.

After travelling a thousand miles for work, the stranger had misplaced his identity card.

Without it he couldn't get a job and he couldn't get home.

In that particular moment Chen told him: "Give me some time. I'll think of something."

He learned to read people the way you learn any new skill.

Badly at first, with a lot of people glaring at him for getting it wrong.

“People in real trouble walk differently,” he says.

“There’s no spirit in it, no direction, and they aren't carrying anything.”

Another reporter once watched him spot a woman in black wiping her nose.

“Where there's snot,” he reasoned, “there are tears.”

He wandered over and simply started talking to her about the fish in the river.

Nothing more, just the fish.

Long enough for her to decide he was safe to be around.

Which she did.

In 2006 Chen spoke with a woman one morning and then lost her that same afternoon.

In response, he took their savings — money he and his wife had put away for an apartment — and rented a room they could use instead.

In the time since that first room, there have been another six since.

The current one runs about four hundred and fifty square feet and on the wall reads a line that translates roughly as:

Tears must be shed, food must be eaten.

The routine once they arrive there is simple.

He feeds people.

He sits with them.

He lets them cry.

Then he takes charge of their phone and calls their family to come and get them.

Some stay three days, some stay a year.

He’s never changed his phone number but he often mentions that he's changing it tomorrow, so they won't feel they owe him anything.

Then he keeps the number anyway and most of them never actually call.

A publisher once offered him three hundred thousand yuan to write a book about it.

Six years of his wages, for writing down what he carries around in his head.

He said no.

Remarkable.

All of this has cost him in many ways.

He took up smoking and drinking in his first year, after a day that went particularly badly, and he knows exactly what it's doing to his health.

"I know it's bad for me," he says.

"But if it all stays blocked up inside and never gets out, that will make me ill instead.”

For years he dealt with nightmares with the people he was unable to reach returning within them.

The time every weekend also had to be borrowed from somewhere, and he knows exactly where.

"I didn't do this alone. It was time that I borrowed from my wife and my child."

He's been accused of chasing fame since the very first year, by those who fail to admire his approach.

He's been told he had no right to interfere and he’s been asked whether he built the bridge himself.

He's been slapped.

And he’s announced his retirement twice.

Once formally, on the twentieth anniversary, to the day, because his hands have begun to shake now and he's frightened of not holding on.

Both times, he went back.

A Chinese magazine captured the essence perfectly: behind the story of a famous good man sits the bind of a good man who has to keep being one.

He’s never accepted the name people gave him.

Ask, then stop talking: He starts with simple words. What makes it work is what comes next. Most people struggle to stay silent in the gap after speaking (especially under duress) and tend to fill it with advice nobody asked for.

Talk about the fish first: Rather than ask what was wrong, he talked to her about the river until she decided he was safe. Jumping straight into a serious topic can read as interrogation, however kindly you mean it. Small talk is how you earn the right to the real question.

Know where your part ends: He’s mentioned he can't clear anyone's debts, and that he'd need to be a professor to help someone with depression in the professional way. So he does what he can, he feeds them, sits with them, and then puts them in touch with the people who are close to them. Noticing that someone is struggling and getting them the help they need are two different tasks.

Chen Si doesn't want imitators, he'd actually prefer to be put out of a job.

Not by the government, even though he’s asked them often enough.

By the rest of us.

Twenty years of weekends walking up to strangers on the worst morning of their lives.

"I am an ordinary guy, and a stranger to suicide, and I can save them. If these people's friends and relatives intervene when they begin to have suicidal thoughts, how could they arrive at such desperation?"

A stranger managed to reach them.

A stranger acting of his own free will without training or payment and with nothing owed in either direction.

What he can't work out is why nobody closer has managed to.

He doesn't say that as an accusation, more as an opening to a broader conversation.

By one count, 469 people have changed their minds.

Hardly any of them ever call him again, a fact he’s never held against them.

One did call, though, years later, out of nowhere.

On the same phone number he’s never changed.

“Big brother Chen, remember me? I got married.”

Twenty-one years of Saturday mornings to hear a single sentence like that.

No doubt he'd call it a fair trade.

Those Saturday mornings?

They belong to Chen.

But the question he asks?

That could belong to anyone.

Ninety seconds of willingness to feel awkward in front of somebody who isn’t okay.

That's the barrier that many can never seem to get over.

Chen believes he's nothing special, even referring to himself as a coarse man and claiming he’s no good at saying anything philosophical.

I reckon he's wrong about that.

And right about everything else.

PLEASE NOTE: If reading this piece brought something to the surface for you, help is available, at any hour of the day.

In Canada: call or text 9-8-8, the Suicide Crisis Helpline. Free,
confidential, English and French, 24 hours a day, every day. 988.ca

In Australia: Lifeline — call 13 11 14, text 0477 13 11 14, or chat at
lifeline.org.au/crisis-chat, 24/7. Beyond Blue — 1300 22 4636, 24/7.
13YARN — 13 92 76, to speak with an Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander
crisis supporter, 24/7.

Anywhere else: findahelpline.com lists verified free helplines in more
than 175 countries.

You don't have to be in crisis to reach out.

If you're worried about someone else, these services will talk to you too.

I picked this album up on vinyl last week, and I'm excited to share it with you.

The last album Hermanos Gutiérrez released in 2024, titled Sonido Cósmico, was beautiful.

Calming, sweeping sounds that pick you up and let you float while the sounds move through you.

Their latest, Los Ojos del Cóndor, came out on September 25 and can stand proudly beside it.

Before we moved to Canada, my wife and I spent six months travelling through both South and Central America.

Music from that part of the world has resonated with me ever since and this album is no different.

Hermanos Gutiérrez (Brothers Gutiérrez), are two brothers, Alejandro and Estevan.

Their mother is originally from Ecuador and their father is Swiss.

They grew up in Switzerland and still reside in Zürich, though Estevan says they’ve always retained a strong connection to Ecuador.

Los Ojos del Cóndor is their third album working with Dan Auerbach of The Black Keys, and was recorded at his Easy Eye Sound studio in Nashville.

It’s comprised of ten instrumental tracks, running just thirty-one minutes all up.

Estevan plays a nylon-string guitar, an instrument his father introduced to him at just eight years old.

While Alejandro plays lap steel and, on several tracks, the charango, a 10-string Andean instrument new to their sound.

This record began with a photograph.

A grainy shot of the brothers' father at the foot of Machu Picchu, taken in 1976, just weeks before he would meet their mother in Ecuador.

Alejandro says that picture became the inspiration for the whole record, and a tribute to a culture they greatly admire.

After recording in Nashville, they travelled to Peru with Super 8 cameras to film the landscape behind it.

The title means "the eyes of the condor," a nod to the iconic bird that calls the Andes’ home and is now under threat.

Estevan says they wanted to deliver the feeling of flying as a condor and, at the same time, riding a train.

Something I personally feel they’ve managed to deliver.

My favourite track on the album is "Ciudad Inca” or Inca City but the record really works best as a complete album listening from start to finish.

The closing track, "Dios de la Paz," runs two minutes and twenty-seven seconds and closes the experience gently.

What I appreciate most is that no one else sounds quite like these two.

Their sound is incredibly moving, captivating at times, taking you on an emotional journey that leaves a lasting impression long after the music is done.

Put it on while you work: Throw it on and allow it to repeat. With no lyrics, it lingers in the background and lets you stay focused.

Read or cook to it: It's the perfect companion to a good book, or an evening when you want nothing more than to relax. It's also perfect background music to have on in the kitchen while dinner comes together.

Play it on vinyl, from start to finish: Vinyl slows you down and ensures you absorb the music and not just snippets here and there. There are moments on this album when it sounds as though the two brothers are playing in the room with you.

There’s one memory from our South America trip that remains vivid in my memory.

During our visit to Colca Canyon in Peru, we had the fortune of witnessing a group of condors gracefully soaring up through the canyon and into the warmer air.

They’re such beautiful, beautiful birds.

So majestic, and likely much larger than you imagine, with a wingspan of up to 3.3 metres.

That’s right, metres!

I can close my eyes at any time and find myself back there in an instant.

This album brings that mental image to life and would’ve been the perfect soundtrack on the drive up to the lookout point.

Instrumental albums never draw your attention away from the music, so your mind can go wherever it likes.

Mine?

It goes straight back to that canyon.

Please share; I'm always keen for great suggestions.

There's a Swedish word for something I've loved doing for as long as I can remember, without ever knowing it had a name.

Gökotta.

It means nothing more than getting up early, going outside and listening to the birds.

The word comes from gök, the Swedish for cuckoo, and otta, an old word for the hours between night and dawn.

A century or so ago it became a spring tradition in Sweden: pack a picnic, walk into the forest and wait in silence for the cuckoo.

You can skip the forest, unless that is, you have one right on your doorstep.

Most of the time, the back step works just fine.

Back home in Australia, the birds never really gave you a choice.

They’re very chatty of a morning.

Magpies, galahs, roosters, parrots, even lyrebirds.

They're loud and they start early.

Each visit I'd sit out on the patio at mum's place with a cup of tea and listen.

Then again at sunset, when the cockatoos really find their voice.

There's research behind this concept, too.

Ryan Hammoud and his team at King's College London used a smartphone app called Urban Mind.

Three times a day for two weeks, at random moments, it asked people what was around them and how they felt.

One question asked whether, right then, they could see or hear birds.

Over three and a half years, 1,292 people completed 26,856 check-ins.

Wellbeing was scored from ten questions about feelings like relaxed, anxious, energetic and lonely.

When birds were around, people scored higher.

The gap was about 1.5 points on a scale from 10 to 50.

Small, sure, but it held in place even after the researchers accounted for whether the person could also see trees, plants or water.

The gap was still there at the next check-in, slightly weaker, and then gone by the one after.

It also showed up in people with depression.

To be fair, it's an observational study of volunteers, so it can't prove the birds caused the lift.

But it certainly aligns with the feeling I get when sitting out the back.

Step out before you grab your phone: First thing, before you check anything. Start with just five minutes. The lift in the studies mentioned above faded within a couple of check-ins, so it's worth repeating tomorrow.

Take your earbuds out: On the walk to the car or the train or anywhere, skip the podcast. The study captured people wherever they happened to be, not only when in a forest.

Notice what's already there: Most of us have birds nearby. Pick out one call and try to determine who's making it. I’ve been using the follwing app for a few years: Merlin Bid App.

My family currently lives in the inner east of Toronto.

We have a maple tree that provides an amazing canopy over our backyard and is where birds gather each morning.

The regulars are robins, blue jays, cardinals.

There's even a red-tailed hawk nearby that squawks every so often to remind everyone whose area we reside within.

Over the last ten years I've become more and more of a morning person, often up before the sun.

Many days I'm out there with a book, listening.

It's refreshing.

It brings me in tune with something bigger than me, and reminds me there's more to life than staring at a screen.

It costs nothing and only takes a few minutes.

So this week, try a gökotta.

Get up a little early, step outside and just listen.

Growing up, the birds never really gave me a choice.

Now the choice is mine to make, and it’s the one I'd make every morning.

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