Humans of New York - Can I just say WOW!

It's Saturday morning. I'm not feeling too great so I've decided to spend the day in bed, reading, watching movies, blogging and checking up with facebook. Am I glad I did! I ran into one of the most entertaining, interesting, amazing, uplifting...wow, I just can't come up with enough adjectives to describe the facebook page/blog called Humans of New York!

I am obsessed by the photos and the stories! This guy named Brandon in 2010 decided he was going to take 10,000 photos of random people in New York to post on a blog. Here's a short video describing why he decided to do this and where it took him. He tells the story much better than I could, because it's his story.



What a laugh this guy Brandon has! Right? I would love to meet him, he seems like such an amazing person and I love what he's done and his facebook page. 

I haven't seen all of his photos yet, but this one truly touched my soul and reminded me of my dad who passed away last year in July. 

Photo Credit - Humans of New York - facebook

Next to each photo Brandon types a snippet of the conversation he has with these people. What struck him as most important about his conversation with this man was this:

"I came from Mexico."

"Why'd you come?"

"Everybody comes for the money."

"Were you scared?"

"Everybody's scared."

I think of the stories that my dad would share with us about his struggles in coming to the United States from Mexico. How scared he was and how he many times had to sleep on trains, like a Hobo and how cold it was and how many times immigration captured him and sent him back to Mexico and he had to struggle to come back to the United States. I remember him telling us of nights he spent sleeping on the desert floor and hearing the sound of the coyotes in the dark and how they frightened him. 

And he did it all for love. Love of his mother and brothers and sisters still in Mexico. He wanted to make their lives better and send them money so they could survive.

Love for his future wife and children, so he could build a life in the United States where he knew that because of him they would have a better life than the one he had and struggled to leave behind in Mexico.

What Brandon is doing by putting these photos out there to move and touch us, to remind us of the humanity and innate goodness of people is just so inspirational. People like Brandon should be celebrated, he should have an Olympic Gold Medal for his excellence in his chosen sport!