Have you ever seen a quote that really resonates? I recently came upon one.

It went something like this: “Sometimes, when it feels like nothing good is happening to you, remember that you just might be the good thing that is supposed to happen to someone else today.”

I remember getting a call recently from someone I know who’sI was speechless going through an excruciatingly difficult time in their life—one I do not wish upon anyone, G‑d forbid. I picked up the phone, expecting to see how I could be of assistance to her. But no! She had called to see how I was managing with my 9-year-old son leaving home to live at his grandparents this year in order to attend a Jewish day school (since we serve as Chabad emissaries in a small town without one).

I was speechless, to say the least. My son, thank G‑d, is doing well, and though we miss him dearly, we are happy that he is surrounded by loving family and friends in New Jersey and will be home often to visit. My missing him, coupled with the joy of how he is doing, is a simple bittersweet emotion that we parents experience in many ways throughout the years.

Nevertheless, this friend took the time to reach out for one purpose: to check in and make sure I was OK; to let me know I had been on her mind these last few weeks. No words came to me at that moment, just tears. How on earth had she found the mental and emotional space to make room for something so small—relative to the all-consuming issues she was facing—confounded me and simply melted my heart.

The ability to see past our own troubles, challenges and hard days, and reach out to another in need is truly exemplary. Often, we are so enmeshed in our personal difficulties that it seems impossible to make room for another.

Yet the Torah tells us that by nature we are gomlei chasadim, those who do acts of kindness for another. We are wired to see past our own life, and all that consumes us and into the soul of another to what they may be needing or feeling.

To be a Jew means to live from a place of ohr (“light”). When the Torah describes the plague of darkness in Egypt, it writes: “No person could see his fellow ... , for three days; but for the children of Israel, there was light in all their dwellings.”1

In this passage, the Torah defines the difference between darkness and light. The ability to “see his fellow” means to see not just on a physical level, but on an emotional and spiritual one as well into the soul of another. To live from a place of light is to radiate empathy, sensitivity, and genuine love and care for another, despite the darkness that seems to engulf us at times.

And something miraculous happens in the process: We areWe bring healing and joy to the world uplifted, too.

Sister to soul sister, we are intertwined. Through our symbiotic relationship, we bring healing and joy to the world. I lift myself out of the mud for a moment to reach out to you. And as my hand extends to you, pulling you higher and higher, I in turn, feel myself carried by your love and care. Higher and higher.

Let’s make today the day we reach out to another, even if you’re not feeling it right now. Allow yourself to feel that tug from the other; that is you being lifted. Together, we can soar.