real life

The most helpful 13 words we've heard in a long time.

At the risk of stereotyping all men with long white beards as repositories of Gandalf the Grey-esque wisdom, a profound gentleman on a São Paulo park bench has delivered the most comforting 13 words we’ve heard all week, nay, all year.

“Just let time go by and try not to think about very much,” the Brazillian man told Humans of New York photographer Brandon Stanton.

“I’ve got it all figured out. Just let time go by and try not to think about very much.”(São Paulo, Brazil)

Posted by Humans of New York on Tuesday, 21 February 2017

Stanton’s photo blog now has more than 18 million followers on Facebook alone and has portraits of interesting people from nearly 20 different countries, including Iran, Iraq, and Pakistan.

Just this month, we read the moving story of a young woman in Argentina who was forced undergo an illegal abortion, shared over 28,500 times.

In these Dog’s Brexit times, when Donald Trump sits in the White House and our own government is still infighting over the existence of climate change, it’s vaguely comforting to know that somewhere in the world, someone has it “all figured out”.

Thank you, kind wizard.