A Spark by Innocent Mwatsikesimbe from The Vision, chapter 60

When someone is at their lowest, the thing that helps most usually isn’t a thing at all. Material comforts do something, but “the right person’s presence brings something impossible to get from elsewhere.”

Innocent found that out by staying with someone everyone else had abandoned. He had little to give materially. What he had was himself — his time, and words of encouragement and comfort — and it turned out to be worth far more than he had thought.

He could give it because he knew the ache himself: heartbreak, betrayal, loneliness. Being alone when you most need someone is what teaches you “how heartless it is to abandon someone when he or she needs you.” That is often how presence works: the person who has felt the loneliness is the one who can end someone else’s, adding not just a smile but life to the heart.