46.3-2.13 Framing Series, Set 2 of 3 (Thinkers of Our Age): Essay 13
Related: Introduction to the Foundation Series · Introduction to the Load-Bearing Series · Introduction to the Framing Series · Framing Series, Set 1 (Parables) · Framing Series, Set 2 (Thinkers) · Essay 1 (Thinkers, Frankl) · Essay 2 (Thinkers, Hanh) · Essay 3 (Thinkers, Grandin) · Essay 4 (Thinkers, Lewis) · Essay 5 (Thinkers, Gibran) · Essay 6 (Thinkers, Brooks) · Essay 7 (Thinkers, Campbell) · Essay 8 (Thinkers, Twain) · Essay 9 (Thinkers, Angelou) · Essay 10 (Thinkers, Mother Teresa) · Essay 11 (Thinkers, MLK) · Essay 12 (Thinkers, Mandela)
Welcome
One of my earliest introductions to Nicholas Kristof came through Half the Sky, the book he wrote with Sheryl WuDunn. Named after the expression women hold up half the sky, the book reflected concerns I already carried and observations I had made for years, but it brought them into sharper focus through the lives of individual people. Long after I finished reading it, my attention kept returning not to the issues themselves but to the people living inside those realities. What began as distant problems became attached to faces, places, and names. More than anything, the book reinforced an uncomfortable question that has stayed with me ever since: What is a person supposed to do after seeing something clearly enough that ignorance is no longer available?
Over the years, I have noticed a subtle shift in what catches my attention. News stories, conversations, books, and experiences that once felt distant increasingly feel personal. Some of those connections come through travel. Others come through work, friendships, family, or brief encounters I could easily have overlooked. Once a situation becomes attached to someone you know, meet, or remember, it no longer feels like someone else’s problem.
What makes this challenge harder today is the sheer volume of what we see. Wars appear on our phones while we eat lunch. Natural disasters arrive as notifications. Human suffering appears between family photos, sports highlights, vacation videos, and advertisements. We see more than any generation before us, yet I am not convinced we absorb more. Stories arrive so quickly that one often replaces another before the first has had time to shape us.
As I worked through this essay, I found myself returning to a question of response rather than belief. Seeing another person’s circumstances matters, but sight alone is not the same as responsibility. The more I reflected on Kristof’s work, the more I revisited moments from my own life that seemed connected by that same challenge.
Why I Chose Nicholas Kristof
I chose Nicholas Kristof because he represents a kind of attention that does not stop at noticing. He is a journalist, columnist, and author, but those titles alone do not fully capture the nature of his work. Information has never been his destination. What I appreciate most about his writing is that awareness is rarely treated as an endpoint. He consistently pushes beyond observation and challenges readers to consider what action, advocacy, generosity, or involvement might look like once a problem becomes impossible to ignore.
That is part of what has always drawn me to his writing. Kristof rarely allows readers to remain spectators. He pulls people close enough to situations that detachment becomes difficult. Distance begins to disappear. Statistics become individuals. Headlines become lives. The reader is no longer observing a problem from afar but standing closer to the people living inside it.
That feels especially relevant today because modern life offers endless ways to observe without engaging. We can follow crises, read stories, watch videos, repost articles, and absorb more information in a day than previous generations encountered in weeks. I do not say that with judgment toward others as much as concern about myself. The harder question is not whether I become aware of suffering, but whether that awareness changes how I respond. Kristof challenges me because he continually asks whether knowledge should leave some mark on the person who possesses it.
The Question That Refuses to Leave
The question Kristof leaves me with is not one that can be resolved through agreement alone.
What do I owe the people whose stories I have already witnessed?
Most of us do not need to be convinced that suffering exists or that it matters. The deeper questions begin after we encounter it. Once I know about a situation, a person, or a need, what belongs to me? How often do I mistake awareness for involvement? What responsibility comes with knowledge? At what point does understanding require action?
Modern life surrounds us with information. Every day brings new stories, new crises, and new reminders of suffering close to home and far away. The harder part is discerning what responsibility remains once a person or need has entered my life. Information arrives quickly. Responsibility is often less clear. That question sits at the center of Kristof’s work.
What makes Kristof effective is his refusal to leave suffering at the level of an issue, trend, or headline. He continually brings the focus back to actual people. That shift changes the conversation for me because it is much easier to discuss a problem than to ignore a person. Once a face, a voice, or a story becomes real, the issue is no longer whether the problem exists. The challenge becomes whether I am willing to remain engaged with it.
The Life and the Pressure
Nicholas Kristof was born in Chicago in 1959 and grew up on a farm in Oregon. Over the course of his career, he has spent decades reporting from places marked by poverty, conflict, injustice, disease, and neglect. The basic biography is important, but what interests me more is the repeated choice underneath it. Throughout his career, he has turned toward realities many of us would rather avoid and introduced readers to people who might otherwise remain unseen.
Most of us organize our lives around what is directly in front of us. We focus on our families, our responsibilities, our work, and the immediate demands of the day. There is nothing wrong with that. The difficulty comes when our attention becomes so narrowly focused that other people’s realities barely register at all. Kristof continually expands the boundaries of that attention by introducing readers to lives they might never encounter otherwise.
His reporting also exposes how easily distance shapes judgment. Problems often appear simpler when viewed from far away. The closer we get to another person’s circumstances, the more complicated certainty becomes. Real lives rarely fit neatly inside the categories we create for them, and Kristof invites readers into that complexity.
That is the pressure Kristof brings for me. Information alone is not the test. The harder challenge is remaining human after becoming informed. That is more difficult than it sounds because repeated exposure to suffering can produce numbness as easily as compassion. There are days when the news feels exhausting, when another tragedy barely breaks through because the previous ten have not yet disappeared. But there is a difference between protecting ourselves from overload and allowing ourselves to become indifferent.
The Conviction That Endured
What I take most seriously from Kristof is not a theory as much as a challenge. Most of us already know more about suffering than we can possibly address. The question is what happens next. Faced with needs that far exceed my capacity, do I retreat into helplessness, or do I remain open to the portion that may actually belong to me?
This is where Kristof’s work brings me back to the Starfish Story. The fact that I cannot help everyone does not mean I should help no one. Sometimes the response is surprisingly ordinary: buying a meal, stopping to talk, asking a question, acknowledging someone who has been overlooked. I have to be careful here because this can easily become sentimental, and that is not what I mean. A small gesture may not transform an entire life. But the size of a problem should never become permission to do nothing.
That conviction reaches close to home because the harder test arrives in everyday situations when responding costs time, comfort, or convenience. The decision is often not between right and wrong. It is between stopping and continuing on. Kristof’s work keeps reminding me that some of the choices that shape us most arrive unexpectedly.
Where This Confronts My Own Story
What surprised me most while writing about Kristof was how often my thoughts wandered away from his work and back toward experiences from my own life. I remembered people I had met, conversations I had almost forgotten, and moments that seemed ordinary at the time but continued returning years later. Many of those memories pointed toward the same question: What do we do once another person’s reality enters our lives?
One memory takes me back to Delhi many years ago. I had just finished dinner with a group of customers at a restaurant when I noticed several children outside. At one point a nearby shopkeeper chased them away with a broom, treating them more like a nuisance than children. After dinner, several of us went looking for them. We eventually found them and spent time buying snacks, milk, and small treats. The amount of money involved was insignificant. The situation changed quickly once the children stopped being part of the scenery. Inside the restaurant they had been easy to observe from a distance. Once we stood beside them, spoke with them, and looked them in the eye, they were no longer a social issue or a statistic. They were simply children.
That experience returned to me years later during a dinner in Beijing with my dear friend and customer, Xiaoli. We had been discussing poverty, and I shared observations from years of travel, both in the United States and abroad. He listened thoughtfully and then explained that Beijing did not really have that kind of poverty. In fact, he told me it would be nearly impossible to find a homeless person anywhere in the city. Rather than debate the point, we decided to test the assumption ourselves. We gathered our leftover food and drove to a nearby train station that sat largely abandoned at night. Xiaoli remained convinced we would find no one.
It did not take long before we found an elderly woman sitting quietly nearby. She appeared startled by our presence and seemed uncertain why we were approaching her. Through Xiaoli, we learned that she and her husband had nowhere else to go. She called him over from a nearby area where he had been resting, and we spent time talking with them. What remained with me was not the poverty itself. It was how easy it had been for both of us to move through that city without noticing people like them.
That lesson followed me into Indonesia as well. Shortly after Hanna and I began dating, we found ourselves in Depok, a city south of Jakarta that I had frequently visited since the 1990s. Depok is home to the University of Indonesia and has always felt energetic and alive. Students fill the streets. Food vendors line the roads. There is movement almost everywhere you look. One evening, Hanna and I decided to buy out an entire food cart. We took the meals and began handing them out to students, laborers, and people living on the margins nearby. It was a small gesture, nothing more. We simply chose to turn toward people rather than walk past them.
Later that same evening, while riding in a taxi, I noticed a man who looked old enough to be someone’s grandfather carrying stacks of flattened cardboard. A short distance behind him walked a woman who appeared to be of a similar age. Something about the scene caught my attention, and I asked the driver to pull over. The road was crowded and there was very little room to stop, but eventually he did. I walked back and spent a few moments speaking with them. They explained that they lived on the streets and collected cardboard to earn what little income they could. I gave them some money and wished them well before returning to the taxi.
What happened next affected me far more than the conversation itself. The taxi driver became emotional. He asked me how I had even picked them out from the crowd. At first I did not understand the question. They were right there beside the road. We had driven directly past them. He explained that although he was Indonesian and they were his own people, they had simply faded into the background of daily life. I have thought about that exchange many times because it feels very close to the heart of Kristof’s work. The challenge is not always generosity. Sometimes it is attention.
As I reflected on these experiences, I noticed something else. Many of the stories that continue bothering me are not the moments when I acted. They are the moments when I hesitated.
Not long ago, I was meeting a friend for lunch at a small Vietnamese restaurant. As we approached the entrance, a young man, likely in his twenties, walked toward us. He appeared disoriented and was almost certainly struggling with addiction. He asked me for money. I said no and walked right past him into the restaurant.
I have thought about that moment many times since. Not because I believe giving him a few dollars would have solved anything. In fact, I doubt it would have. What bothered me was something much simpler. I moved past him without engaging at all. I did not ask if he was okay. I did not look him in the eye. I did not treat him like a person carrying a story. I encountered a situation I did not want to enter and kept walking.
That encounter immediately brought me back to a memory from childhood. When I was around ten years old, I traveled with a children’s choir to Chicago. At one point, a homeless man approached my mom and me asking for help. My mom declined and guided us into a nearby building. Once inside, she explained that he would likely spend any money on alcohol. Her reasoning was probably correct, but something about the interaction did not sit right with me. I remember crying and asking if there was another way we could help. After our event concluded, we went to a McDonald’s, bought food, and spent time searching for him. We never found him.
Decades later, standing outside that Vietnamese restaurant, I realized I had become the adult in the story. The difference was that this time I had not even attempted the second part. I had not looked for another way. I had simply moved on.
I do not share that as an act of self-condemnation. There are real considerations involving safety, mental illness, addiction, and uncertainty. The lesson for me is not that every situation has an obvious solution. The lesson is that uncertainty can sometimes become an excuse for disengagement. It can cause me to move past another person so quickly that I never pause long enough to acknowledge their humanity.
The deeper I explored Kristof’s work, the more I realized my greatest failures rarely begin with ignorance. More often, they emerge in the space between recognizing a need and deciding how to respond. There are times when I step forward, and there are times when routine, uncertainty, convenience, or distraction make it easier to keep moving.
Perhaps that is why this essay has lingered with me. The more I reflect on these experiences, the more I believe that the first responsibility of witness is not fixing. It is seeing. The people I have written about in this section did not need me to solve their lives. They needed someone willing to acknowledge that their lives were there.
Sometimes the challenge is not knowing what to do, but remaining willing to engage when the answer is unclear.
What I Want My Daughters to Carry
When I think about my daughters, I do not spend time worrying about whether they will be informed. They are growing up in a world overflowing with information. By the time they reach adulthood, they will have access to more knowledge, more perspectives, more stories, and more images than any generation in history. Their obstacle will not be access. Their responsibility will be deciding what to do with what they see.
One reason Kristof feels especially relevant to me as a father is that he keeps bringing the conversation back to individual human beings. It is easy to care about causes in theory. It is harder to remember that every cause eventually leads back to someone’s life. I hope my daughters never lose that connection. I hope they learn to see beyond labels, categories, and headlines and remain curious about the lives underneath them.
At times, the volume of suffering feels overwhelming. Another difficult story arrives before I have fully processed the previous one. What I hope for my daughters is not that they carry the weight of every problem they encounter. It is that they never become so accustomed to hardship that they stop responding to it. Compassion eventually asks whether we are willing to move toward another person, even in a small way.
I do not expect my daughters to eliminate poverty, cure loneliness, or fix injustice. Few people possess that kind of influence. What I hope is that they recognize where they can make a difference and have the courage to do so. I hope they learn not to measure people by appearances, labels, or circumstances. That they pause long enough to listen, ask questions, and recognize another person’s humanity before deciding how to respond.
Some of the most memorable acts I have witnessed throughout my life would never appear in a headline. A conversation with someone who felt forgotten. A visit made at the right time. A phone call that arrived when it was needed most. A simple gesture of acknowledgment. What made those moments meaningful was not their size but their timing. Often the people involved never realized the difference they had made. Influence is frequently quieter than we imagine.
I also want them to understand that compassion does not always arrive conveniently. It often appears when we are busy, distracted, uncomfortable, uncertain, or tired. It rarely schedules itself around our availability. Some of the experiences that continue teaching me today are not the ones where I responded well. They are the occasions I moved past too quickly, convinced I did not have time or allowing uncertainty to become an excuse not to engage. Those experiences remind me that character is often revealed in interruptions rather than plans.
My daughters will learn these lessons less from my explanations than from my habits. They will learn them in ordinary moments: how I speak about people, whether I notice someone who is struggling, how I respond when another person’s circumstances cross my path, and what I choose to do next. Long before they can articulate these values, they will be absorbing them.
If there is one lesson I hope they carry from this essay, it is that every person they encounter is carrying a story they cannot fully see. Some stories are joyful. Some are painful. Some involve burdens invisible to everyone else. Remembering that reality changes the way we speak, listen, judge, and respond.
In a world constantly competing for attention, that is one of the most meaningful gifts they can offer.
Leadership Under Constraint
The leadership lesson I take from Nicholas Kristof has very little to do with journalism and everything to do with attention. From the beginning, this essay has revolved around how we respond to the realities that enter our field of vision. Leadership brings that same challenge into a different setting. What receives our attention because of the choices a leader makes, and what quietly slips to the margins when no one takes responsibility for it?
Every leader directs attention. Whether intentionally or unintentionally, leaders help determine which problems receive discussion, which realities receive acknowledgment, and which people receive consideration. Over time, organizations become remarkably good at focusing on what is measured. Sales numbers, financial results, productivity, efficiency, customer satisfaction, timelines, and performance metrics all matter. Yet some of the most important realities in an organization rarely appear on a dashboard. The employee who is quietly burning out. The teammate who feels isolated. The relationship that is beginning to fray. Those realities often remain hidden unless someone deliberately chooses to notice them.
One of the reasons Kristof’s work resonates with me is that he consistently examines realities many people would prefer not to confront directly. Leadership involves similar choices. There are always competing priorities, limited resources, and unfinished work. The challenge is recognizing what needs attention before circumstances force the decision for us.
I have seen this throughout my career. Sometimes the issue creating the greatest strain is not the issue being discussed in the meeting. Sometimes the most important voice belongs to the person speaking the least. Sometimes a declining relationship, an unresolved conflict, or a struggling employee remains hidden beneath otherwise passable performance. Leaders who only see metrics often miss the human reality beneath them. Leaders who remain attentive to both tend to make better decisions because they understand more of the story.
This is one of the reasons coaching has become so meaningful to me. At its core, coaching is not about fixing people or taking ownership of someone else’s journey. Nor is it about solving every problem that enters the conversation. More often, it begins with listening carefully, remaining curious, and creating space for another person to think out loud. Many people spend large portions of their lives carrying burdens that few others take the time to understand. Sometimes clarity emerges simply because someone finally has the opportunity to hear their own thoughts, recognize what matters most, and take the next step forward. Sometimes the most valuable thing we can offer is our presence.
Over the years I have worked with distributors, colleagues, mentees, board members, community leaders, and coaching clients facing challenges very different from my own. I cannot live those experiences for them or make their decisions on their behalf. What I can do is walk alongside them for a period of time and better understand what they are carrying. Increasingly, I believe leadership often looks less like providing answers and more like refusing to let people feel alone while searching for them.
Kristof’s work also reminds me that awareness without movement eventually becomes hollow. Organizations can discuss culture without changing it. Teams can identify problems without addressing them. Leaders can acknowledge issues without taking meaningful action. The next step may be a conversation, a difficult decision, a policy change, or simply paying attention to someone who has been overlooked. But if nothing changes, awareness eventually becomes observation.
I am still learning this lesson myself. At times, I become so focused on tasks, deadlines, responsibilities, and outcomes that efficiency begins to crowd out attentiveness. Kristof’s work serves as a useful reminder that leadership is not only about moving people toward results. It is also about remaining aware of the human beings traveling alongside us. The most effective leaders I have known never seemed to lose sight of that distinction.
Perhaps that is the leadership challenge Kristof leaves me with. To remain attentive to the people whose stories have already crossed my path. To recognize the human realities that exist beneath the metrics, meetings, and daily demands of the work. Leadership, like compassion, often begins by choosing not to look away.
Reflection Point
Awareness becomes meaningful when it changes how we move through the world.
The Lesson: Refusing Indifference
- Awareness is not the same as involvement. Knowing about a problem and responding to it are different things.
- The size of a problem does not determine the value of a response. Most meaningful acts begin with one person, one conversation, or one small step.
- Compassion often starts before solutions. Attention, presence, and acknowledgment are forms of action.
- What receives our attention shapes our character. What we ignore shapes us as well.
- Leadership and citizenship share a common responsibility: helping people see what matters rather than only what is convenient.
Practical Takeaways
- Pay attention to the people, stories, or situations that continue returning to your thoughts.
- When a problem feels overwhelming, focus on the next responsible step rather than the entire solution.
- Before deciding whether you can help, pause long enough to see the person in front of you.
Two Questions to Explore
- What responsibility do I have toward the people whose stories I have already witnessed?
- What is one small step I can take toward a person or situation I would normally move past?
Further Resources
Links are not provided here because they often expire or change over time. The titles below are listed clearly so they can be easily searched and accessed at your convenience.
- Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky. A powerful examination of poverty, human trafficking, gender inequality, and the transformative impact of individual action around the world.
- Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, A Path Appears. A practical exploration of how ordinary people can make meaningful differences in the lives of others through focused acts of engagement and service.
- Katie Davis Majors, Kisses from Katie. The story of a young woman who encountered suffering, chose not to look away, and built a life around serving vulnerable children in Uganda.
- Gary Haugen, The Locust Effect. A compelling examination of violence, injustice, and the practical work required to protect vulnerable people around the world.
- Robin Williams, What Dreams May Come (film). A moving exploration of love, despair, sacrifice, hope, and the willingness to move toward another person’s suffering rather than away from it.
- Feed My Starving Children. An organization focused on addressing global hunger through practical action, volunteer engagement, and meal-packing efforts that connect awareness with service.
Thank you for spending this time with me. Writing this essay exposed more in me than I expected it would. I came into it thinking mainly about Nicholas Kristof’s work as a journalist and advocate. Somewhere along the way, it became a reflection on the people I have encountered and the moments I still revisit years later. I do not write this as someone who always responds well. I write it as someone increasingly aware that life presents far more chances to notice, acknowledge, and care than we often realize, and that many of them disappear far more quickly than we expect.
We choose who we become.
Live. Lead. Love.
Billy
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Explore the Foundation Series Introduction · Explore the Load-Bearing Series Introduction · Explore the Framing Series Introduction · Explore the Framing Series, Set 1 (Parables) Introduction · Explore the Framing Series, Set 2 (Thinkers) Introduction
Valuable insights, gentle prodding to value involvement, thank you, Billy!
Thank you, Father Forliti. I am grateful you found value in it. Kristof has a way of reminding us that involvement often matters more than we realize.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts. You mentioned the story in Beijing many years ago but I never knew my father was with you. How interesting! Reading your words, I am struck by how deeply our minds resonate despite being half a world apart.
The people I admire most are Yi Yin, Cao Cao, and Mao Zedong. Blessed with extraordinary ability, they could have easily lived a life of supreme luxury and pleasure. Yet for the sake of common people across the realm, they never indulged themselves even for a single day. Their whole lives were spent on military campaigns and state governance. Their beloved ones sacrificed for the cause one after another.
To most people, the sufferings of ordinary folk are none of their concern. But for these three men, if even one person still lived in hardship, they deemed it their bounden duty to remedy the plight. They voluntarily bore the weight of the whole nation upon their shoulders. Mencius called such people the Sages of Mission (the saints who take universal responsibility upon themselves).
As you rightly observed, disasters keep coming one after another. On a road trip across the United States not long ago, my friends and I studied the history of Gypsies and Native American peoples. Meanwhile, we often watch footage of Palestinians and Ukrainians on my phone. These races never met a Sage of Mission to turn their fate around, so they remain trapped in abject misery today, in a cruel world where human life counts for nothing.
We Chinese are incredibly fortunate. For thousands of years, whenever our nation fell apart and the people endured untold suffering, heroes would rise up. They abandoned lives of ease, sacrificed everything they had, and strove to save the collapsing nation and rescue the afflicted masses—even though those people were total strangers to them.
I often reflect: what merit do I possess to enjoy such a prosperous and comfortable life? My aspirations and wisdom are not one ten-thousandth of those martyrs and pioneers, yet I live in luxury ten thousand times greater than they ever knew.
Personally, I have been blessed beyond measure. Back in the 1990s, my mother met a group of kind-hearted Americans. Without expecting any reward, they helped her—a poor Chinese teacher from abroad. They bought her new clothes, provided her with food and lodging, broadened her horizons, and eventually invested in her business. They changed the destiny of our entire family. I grew up standing firmly on my parents’ achievements, enjoying a life of affluence without breaking my back.
I am deeply grateful to the great men of China, as well as those benevolent Americans. Without them, I too would be stuck in suffering.
You mentioned the frustration of wanting to ease the world’s pain yet feeling powerless. I would like to share an excerpt from my favorite piece of writing. In his Ten Advantages and Ten Shortcomings, Guo Jia appraised Cao Cao with these words:
“You may occasionally overlook trivial matters right before your eyes. But when it comes to great affairs that affect the whole realm, the kindness you extend always far exceeds people’s expectations. Even for matters you do not witness firsthand, your careful planning ensures that all things turn out well.”
This passage holds the answer. In my view, we can afford to overlook minor trivialities and devote ourselves to work with broader, far-reaching influence. Writing essays and working as a coach are exactly this kind of world-reaching undertaking. Thanks to you, more people including me have discovered greater self-worth, and society has become a better place. Poverty and warfare will naturally recede little by little.
You are already doing meaningful work, so there is no need for self-doubting. Nor should you pour your energy into one or two homeless addicts. You have already channeled your efforts in the right direction. Even I, living on the other side of the globe, have been profoundly influenced by you. No doubt you have touched far more people, triggering a massive butterfly effect you cannot even see. The positive changes you bring to the world extend well beyond a handful of destitute wanderers. You ought to take immense pride in what you have accomplished, and your daughters ought to be proud of you too.
Of course, accomplishing great deeds is never easy. I do not dare to dream that I could measure up to Yi Yin, Cao Cao, or Mao Zedong even one ten-thousandth. Still, I feel dejected that I have made no noteworthy achievements or brought any positive impact to society. I have long hoped to carry out cultural outreach online. I plan to share my most cherished texts: The Art of War by Sun Wu, Guo Jia’s Ten Advantages and Ten Shortcomings, Mao Zedong’s On Practice and On Contradiction. I will pair these writings with the stirring life stories of Yi Yin, Cao Cao, and Mao Zedong.
My long-term dream is to develop a video game. Players will have fun while learning this chapter of history, growing fond of these towering figures, absorbing their aspirations and wisdom, applying such insights to their own lives, and improving the world around them.
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Let us spur each other onward.
Thank you for such a deep, thorough, and thoughtful reflection, Hongjian. I read every word with great appreciation. More than anything, I am grateful for your friendship and for the care you put into responding. I hope we can make more time to connect outside of our writing. I always enjoy our conversations and learn from you.
One thing I admire deeply is the contribution you are making. When I think about the example you are setting for An and Yiran, I have tremendous respect for you as a husband and father. At the same time, through your lectures and your passion for Chinese history, you are helping many others discover the wisdom of both ancient and modern thinkers. Your ability to take profound ideas and make them understandable and practical is remarkable. You are making meaningful contributions, even if they are difficult to measure today.
I also wanted to respond to one point you made about not spending too much energy on one or two homeless addicts. Intellectually, I understand exactly what you mean, and I agree that our greatest impact often comes through work that reaches many people. But I never want to lose sight of the one or two. Part of that comes from something incredibly personal. My younger sister, Mary, lost her life to addiction. I often imagine how much richer my own life would be if she were still here today… being an aunt to my daughters, sitting around the table playing cribbage with me and my dad, and sharing ordinary moments together. Because of that, every person struggling with addiction reminds me, in some small way, of her.
I know it is not my responsibility to save anyone. But I do believe it is my responsibility to acknowledge their humanity and help in every way I am able to. Sometimes that simply means making eye contact, offering an authentic smile, or greeting someone whom the rest of the world walks past. Those small moments matter to me because they honor the dignity of the individual.
More than anything, I am grateful for your reflections on Kristof’s essay. Your response is exactly the kind of conversation I hope these essays create. It reminds me very much of my own experience reading Nicholas Kristof’s work years ago. His writing reinforces my need to see the world differently, and now I hope, in some small way, to pass that gift along to others.
Thank you again, my dear friend. I admire your heart, your intellect, and your commitment to making the world better. And, I wholeheartedly agree, let us continue to encourage one another (and those in our spheres) along the journey.
In this regard, you and I are cut from the same cloth—we can’t help but want to help people we don’t know well. That’s why, even when we were total strangers back then, you went all out to assist me. I can tell clearly it wasn’t just the task Toro assigned you; far more than that, it came from your innate desire to lift others up.
It’s already been a week since I arrived in Seattle, yet I’m still struggling with jet lag. This only brings back memories of countless days past: every time you stepped off an international flight, you’d skip rest entirely and throw yourself wholeheartedly into helping me, Fat Dragon, and everyone on our team. I’m endlessly grateful to have you in my life!
Your message means more to me than you know, Hongjian. Thank you.
I have always believed that the best part of any job is the people we meet along the way. Helping you and the team never felt like an obligation. It was a privilege, and I learned just as much from all of you as I hope you learned from me.
I hope the jet lag eases soon and that Seattle begins to feel like home. I have no doubt you will do great things there. I am grateful for the conversation we shared today, and I look forward to seeing where your journey leads next.
Thank you, Billy—this is another truly outstanding piece.
Yes, when events in the news are connected to places we have visited or people we have encountered, they begin to feel different—more immediate and personal. Yet even then, most of the time, news remains just news. The suffering of others is quickly replaced by the next story, and over time, we can become numb. Your article challenges that pattern and invites us to ask a more difficult question: how can we respond better?
The stories you shared—whether from Beijing, Indonesia, Chicago, or the one happened in front of the Vietnamese restaurant—feel deeply real. We often overlook not only distant suffering, but also the struggles of people around us. Each person carries a story we can never fully understand. Inspired by your reflections, I hope to become more attentive to the people I encounter, and to the lives behind their stories.
The same applies in the workplace. While KPIs are undoubtedly important, focusing on them alone can cause us to neglect long-term development and what truly matters. In many cases, doing the right thing is far more important than simply chasing the numbers.
Thank you, Billy, for bringing us these reflections. They push us to become better individuals—and, more importantly, to better serve and care for others.
Joe, thank you for this incredibly thoughtful reflection. I was particularly struck by your observation that “each person carries a story we can never fully understand.” I think that recognition alone has the potential to change how we move through the world and how we show up for one another.
I also appreciate the connection you drew to our work lives. Metrics and KPIs matter, but when they become the only things we see, we risk overlooking the people, relationships, and long-term responsibilities that ultimately give those numbers meaning. Thank you for reading so carefully and for adding a perspective that genuinely enriches the conversation.
Hello Joe! This is Hongjian.
I used to be a big fan of KPIs. Yet after all these years, I’ve come to realize that while KPIs can certainly guarantee the minimum baseline for performance, but people’s hearts are what unlock the upper limit. What drives progress in an organization or society, is never the bare minimum baseline — it is the pursuit of that upper limit.
Glad that we meet here, Joe, thanks to Billy!
Hongjian, I really like the way you expressed that. KPIs can establish the floor, but they rarely inspire people to reach the ceiling. That comes from purpose, trust, and leaders who genuinely care about the people around them.
I am grateful the two of you connected, and I have a feeling you will both enjoy the conversations ahead.