People come into our lives for a reason, for a season, or for a lifetime. And sometimes, the people who come in for the briefest of brief seasons can really completely change us as people.
It only takes a moment to leave a strong impression, and these people left impressions so vast that the recipient's whole lives changed after meeting them. What a role to play in someone's life.
u/vSpecky asked:
Simple Yet Effective
GiphyWhen I was young, there was one flight that my mother and I had completely different seats for. I tried to hold it together, but it was still pretty obvious that I was upset over the situation. One of the men next to me noticed. He told me that he was on the flight with his family, and he had a son my age. He asked me if I'd like to have his son sit with me instead. I thought it'd be nice to have another kid to talked to, so they swapped seats. The man even gave us his laptop so that we could watch the Goofy Movie during the flight. The other kid and I had a great time.
I'll never forget that man and his son. Their kindness turned an upsetting situation into one of the most enjoyable flights I ever had.
Young Man's Game
Helped an Old Lady in Walmart. We talked while I was waiting for my ride. I will never forget how her voice broke when she told me in verbatim "While you are young, you gotta live life. Cause when you turn old and you start falling apart, you just want to stop."
Such A Lovely Place, Such A Lovely Face
I remember it because it was so random. Was camping and went for a drunken walk at 2 am. Saw a light on the other side of a large pond and walked around over to it. Met a pair of Russian guys with a 6 pack of beer and a canoe and guitar. Started chatting with them and the guy with the guitar was trying to play Hotel California but they didn't really know how the vocals part went. We ended up sitting in the canoe (on land) drinking beer and singing Hotel California.
Business Biddies
I met a really successful guy on a layover in China. He was succesful in many ways: podcasts, teaching seminars, and this guy was a financial advisor. I was maybe 22 at the time and he never bragged about himself. He just wanted to get to know me more and wanted me to pursue my dreams. I still have his business card and think of him and his kindness every time I travel.
+1 Charisma
My fiancé and I once stopped at a Jack in the Box for a snack and ended up talking to a stranger for about 15-20 minutes even though we had already gotten our food. He came up to us and asked if he could talk to us because he was trying to put himself out there more, and that he didn't have good people skills. We said sure, and had a really lovely conversation with him. He definitely seemed anxious and like he may have been having a rough time in general, but I think that conversation was good for all of us, and he was genuinely trying to improve on himself. I wonder where he's at today and hope he's well. A cool dude.
Tunes For Bears To Dance To
When I was in my mid teens (a loooooong time ago) I was with some mates in town and we saw an old fella trip and fall over. We dashed over and helped him up and the owner of the cafe he was in front of came out and beckoned us in. While she fixed him a cool drink and waited for the ambo to turn up, I noticed he had a tattooed number on his arm. Being young and dumb I asked him about it. He smiled and told me that it was a concentration camp number and spent the next ten minutes giving us a factual but quite harrowing description of his younger life. When the ambo arrived, he shook all of our hands in both of his and said "you are kind boys, stay kind. I have seen many unkind people and it makes me happy to find kind ones."
To this day, I try to be kind because the impression he gave me was that evil is not thwarted by power or cunning or acts of equal evil. Genuinely, this was a brief encounter that I will never forget.
Artistic Perception
Not a romantic story: I ran a class one time which was attended by several older people, including a 77 year old man, an artist who brought some of his unpublished work and showed me. I thought he was really talented and I wanted to see him put his work out there, tried to follow up a couple of times but everyone was busy and I wasn't able to be helpful. He died not long afterwards and his work will probably never go out into the world now because I don't know if anyone he knows was really invested in it at all. I only met him that once but it still cuts me deep to think about him and everything that died with him.
Boomer Fail
Oh this is easy. I sat next to a man on a plane from Boston to Chicago who, during boarding, complained about a woman's dress bag containing her wedding dress being placed gently atop his suit jacket in the overhead bin, because it might crush it. This should have been warning enough but I'm chatty by nature and asked him some inane small talk question as we took off. This turned into a flight-long conversation in which he revealed himself to be just...awful.
He was the epitome of an oblivious boomer living in the past. When I told him I was newly employed at a university his response was to blame the recent supreme court decision for gay marriage on Harvard (???) and predicted that "now a man can marry his parrot or whatever." He expressed regretful surprise that college grads with great resumes have so much trouble finding jobs these days...and in the same breath basically called his daughter a failure for still living at home. And then for extra fun, after a few cocktails he started touching me casually, which at that point in my life and in such closed quarters I did not know how to shut down. Luckily we landed shortly after and I noped out of there reallllll fast.
He's labeled in my head as Worst Man In The World. I think of him surprisingly often.
Twix And Take 5
The guy who drove slowly through my neighborhood with the window down yelling "SNICKERS!" over and over again.
He stops and asks "Yo, have you seen a cat in the area?"
I reply "Sorry dude, haven't seen a cat."
"Cool, thanks anyway........SNIIIIICKERS!" and just keeps driving.
I hope he found his cat.
Standing Up For Fellows
GiphyWandering Istanbul alone (I am female) during the day. Started getting followed by a group of men - catcalling and getting explicit.
I am not a small woman but i was getting uncomfortable. Instead of walking to my hotel I stopped at small cafe hoping they would leave me alone. I sat down and ordered Apple Tea and as the owner brought it out to me the group showed up. The owner (middle aged man) laid into the group and threatened to call the police. They scattered and I spent the afternoon smoking shish-a and drinking tea while watching soccer with the owner and his son.
Went back for tea the rest of my stay but won't ever forget the feeling of safety from that man or how delicious his tea was!
Experiencing death is a fascinating and frightening idea.
Who doesn't want to know what is waiting for us on the other side?
But so many of us want to know and then come back and live a little longer.
It would be so great to be sure there is something else.
But the whole dying part is not that great, so we'll have to rely on other people's accounts.
Redditor AlaskaStiletto wanted to hear from everyone who has returned to life, so they asked:
"Redditors who have 'died' and come back to life, what did you see?"
Sensations
Happy Good Vibes GIF by Major League SoccerGiphy"My dad's heart stopped when he had a heart attack and he had to be brought back to life. He kept the paper copy of the heart monitor which shows he flatlined. He said he felt an overwhelming sensation of peace, like nothing he had felt before."
PeachesnPain
Recovery
"I had surgical complications in 2010 that caused a great deal of blood loss. As a result, I had extremely low blood pressure and could barely stay awake. I remember feeling like I was surrounded by loved ones who had passed. They were in a circle around me and I knew they were there to guide me onwards. I told them I was not ready to go because my kids needed me and I came back."
"My nurse later said she was afraid she’d find me dead every time she came into the room."
"It took months, and blood transfusions, but I recovered."
good_golly99
Take Me Back
"Overwhelming peace and happiness. A bright airy and floating feeling. I live a very stressful life. Imagine finding out the person you have had a crush on reveals they have the same feelings for you and then you win the lotto later that day - that was the feeling I had."
"I never feared death afterward and am relieved when I hear of people dying after suffering from an illness."
rayrayrayray
Free
The Light Minnie GIF by (G)I-DLEGiphy"I had a heart surgery with near-death experience, for me at least (well the possibility that those effects are caused by morphine is also there) I just saw black and nothing else but it was warm and I had such inner peace, its weird as I sometimes still think about it and wish this feeling of being so light and free again."
TooReDTooHigh
This is why I hate surgery.
You just never know.
Shocked
Giphy"More of a near-death experience. I was electrocuted. I felt like I was in a deep hole looking straight up in the sky. My life flashed before me. Felt sad for my family, but I had a deep sense of peace."
Admirable_Buyer6528
The SOB
"Nursing in the ICU, we’ve had people try to die on us many times during the years, some successfully. One guy stood out to me. His heart stopped. We called a code, are working on him, and suddenly he comes to. We hadn’t vented him yet, so he was able to talk, and he started screaming, 'Don’t let them take me, don’t let them take me, they are coming,' he was scared and yelling."
"Then he yelled a little more, as we tried to calm him down, he screamed, 'No, No,' and gestured towards the end of the bed, and died again. We didn’t get him back. It was seriously creepy. We called his son to tell him the news, and the son said basically, 'Good, he was an SOB.'”
1-cupcake-at-a-time
Colors
"My sister died and said it was extremely peaceful. She said it was very loud like a train station and lots of talking and she was stuck in this area that was like a curtain with lots of beautiful colors (colors that you don’t see in real life according to her) a man told her 'He was sorry, but she had to go back as it wasn’t her time.'"
Hannah_LL7
"I had a really similar experience except I was in an endless garden with flowers that were colors I had never seen before. It was quiet and peaceful and a woman in a dress looked at me, shook her head, and just said 'Not yet.' As I was coming back, it was extremely loud, like everyone in the world was trying to talk all at once. It was all very disorienting but it changed my perspective on life!"
huntokarrr
The Fog
"I was in a gray fog with a girl who looked a lot like a young version of my grandmother (who was still alive) but dressed like a pioneer in the 1800s she didn't say anything but kept pulling me towards an opening in the wall. I kept refusing to go because I was so tired."
"I finally got tired of her nagging and went and that's when I came to. I had bled out during a c-section and my heart could not beat without blood. They had to deliver the baby and sew up the bleeders. refill me with blood before they could restart my heart so, like, at least 12 minutes gone."
Fluffy-Hotel-5184
Through the Walls
"My spouse was dead for a couple of minutes one miserable night. She maintains that she saw nothing, but only heard people talking about her like through a wall. The only thing she remembers for absolute certain was begging an ER nurse that she didn't want to die."
"She's quite alive and well today."
Hot-Refrigerator6583
Well let's all be happy to be alive.
It seems to be all we have.
Trying to lose weight is a struggle understood by many people regardless of size.
The goal of reaching a healthy weight may seem unattainable, but with diet and exercise, it can pay off through persistence and discipline.
Seeing the pounds gradually drop off can also be a great motivator and incentivize people to stay the course.
Those who've achieved their respective weight goals shared their experiences when Redditor apprenti8455 asked:
"People who lost a lot of weight, what surprises you the most now?"
Redditors didn't see these coming.
Shiver Me Timbers
"I’m always cold now!"
– Telrom_1
"I had a coworker lose over 130 pounds five or six years ago. I’ve never seen him without a jacket on since."
– r7ndom
"140 lbs lost here starting just before COVID, I feel like that little old lady that's always cold, damn this top comment was on point lmao."
– mr_remy
Drawing Concern
"I lost 100 pounds over a year and a half but since I’m old(70’s) it seems few people comment on it because (I think) they think I’m wasting away from some terminal illness."
– dee-fondy
"Congrats on the weight loss! It’s honestly a real accomplishment 🙂"
"Working in oncology, I can never comment on someone’s weight loss unless I specifically know it was on purpose, regardless of their age. I think it kind of ruffles feathers at times, but like I don’t want to congratulate someone for having cancer or something. It’s a weird place to be in."
– LizardofDeath
Unleashing Insults
"I remember when I lost the first big chunk of weight (around 50 lbs) it was like it gave some people license to talk sh*t about the 'old' me. Old coworkers, friends, made a lot of not just negative, but harsh comments about what I used to look like. One person I met after the big loss saw a picture of me prior and said, 'Wow, we wouldn’t even be friends!'”
"It wasn’t extremely common, but I was a little alarmed by some of the attention. My weight has been up and down since then, but every time I gain a little it gets me a little down thinking about those things people said."
– alanamablamaspama
Not Everything Goes After Losing Weight
"The loose skin is a bit unexpected."
– KeltarCentauri
"I haven’t experienced it myself, but surgery to remove skin takes a long time to recover. Longer than bariatric surgery and usually isn’t covered by insurance unless you have both."
– KatMagic1977
"It definitely does take a long time to recover. My Dad dropped a little over 200 pounds a few years back and decided to go through with skin removal surgery to deal with the excess. His procedure was extensive, as in he had skin taken from just about every part of his body excluding his head, and he went through hell for weeks in recovery, and he was bedridden for a lot of it."
– Jaew96
These Redditors shared their pleasantly surprising experiences.
Shopping
"I can buy clothes in any store I want."
– WaySavvyD
"When I lost weight I was dying to go find cute, smaller clothes and I really struggled. As someone who had always been restricted to one or two stores that catered to plus-sized clothing, a full mall of shops with items in my size was daunting. Too many options and not enough knowledge of brands that were good vs cheap. I usually went home pretty frustrated."
– ganache98012
No More Symptoms
"Lost about 80 pounds in the past year and a half, biggest thing that I’ve noticed that I haven’t seen mentioned on here yet is my acid reflux and heartburn are basically gone. I used to be popping tums every couple hours and now they just sit in the medicine cabinet collecting dust."
– colleennicole93
Expanding Capabilities
"I'm all for not judging people by their appearance and I recognise that there are unhealthy, unachievable beauty standards, but one thing that is undeniable is that I can just do stuff now. Just stamina and flexibility alone are worth it, appearance is tertiary at best."
– Ramblonius
People Change Their Tune
"How much nicer people are to you."
"My feet weren't 'wide' they were 'fat.'"
– LiZZygsu
"Have to agree. Lost 220 lbs, people make eye contact and hold open doors and stuff"
"And on the foot thing, I also lost a full shoe size numerically and also wear regular width now 😅"
– awholedamngarden
It's gonna take some getting used to.
Bones Everywhere
"Having bones. Collarbones, wrist bones, knee bones, hip bones, ribs. I have so many bones sticking out everywhere and it’s weird as hell."
– Princess-Pancake-97
"I noticed the shadow of my ribs the other day and it threw me, there’s a whole skeleton in here."
– bekastrange
Knee Pillow
"Right?! And they’re so … pointy! Now I get why people sleep with pillows between their legs - the knee bones laying on top of each other (side sleeper here) is weird and jarring."
– snic2030
"I lost only 40 pounds within the last year or so. I’m struggling to relate to most of these comments as I feel like I just 'slimmed down' rather than dropped a ton. But wow, the pillow between the knees at night. YES! I can relate to this. I think a lot of my weight was in my thighs. I never needed to do this up until recently."
– Strongbad23
More Mobility
"I’ve lost 100 lbs since 2020. It’s a collection of little things that surprise me. For at least 10 years I couldn’t put on socks, or tie my shoes. I couldn’t bend over and pick something up. I couldn’t climb a ladder to fix something. Simple things like that I can do now that fascinate me."
"Edit: Some additional little things are sitting in a chair with arms, sitting in a booth in a restaurant, being able to shop in a normal store AND not needing to buy the biggest size there, being able to easily wipe my butt, and looking down and being able to see my penis."
– dma1965
People making significant changes, whether for mental or physical health, can surely find a newfound perspective on life.
But they can also discover different issues they never saw coming.
That being said, overcoming any challenge in life is laudable, especially if it leads to gaining confidence and ditching insecurities.