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Joy

10 things that made us smile this week

From awesome kiddos to delightful doggos, here's this week's roundup of joy.

10 things that made us smile this week

10 snippets of delight from around the internet.

Hi friends!

Spring is finally springing, thank goodness. We've had some weirdly late wintry weather the past couple of weeks where I live, so seeing the daffodils and tulips bursting into bloom is refreshing. "Earth laughs in flowers," wrote Ralph Waldo Emerson. So succinct and so true.

Every season carries its own delights; we simply need to look for them. The same goes for all of the spaces we inhabit, from our homes to our communities to the big wide, world. It's a basic, fundamental truth that when we look for joy, we will find it. It might be buried under a bunch of detritus, and we may have to wade through some much and mire to find it, but it's there. Always is and always has been.


Pulling together these smile-worthy finds each week feels like gathering a bouquet of flowers. Such a simple act—to find beauty and take the time to hold and appreciate it—is often underestimated. Maybe it's not earth-shattering or life-changing, but it's good. And sometimes good is more than enough to bring some much-needed joy to our hearts and smiles to our faces.

With that, enjoy these 10 things that made us smile this week:

First, a happy hello from Boomer the "land cloud." 

Isn't "land cloud" the perfect description of this doggo? (And more importantly, how did they get Boomer into that backpack?)

Four cellists play Ravel's Bolero on a single cello and WOW.

"Bolero" is known for its insistent, repeated snare drum rhythm and for building tension with the addition of more and more instruments in the orchestra as the piece progresses. Playing it on one instrument seems impossible, and yet, here we are. Amazing. Read more about this fabulous collaboration here.

Man shares a heartwarming letter thanking a neighbor for letting him pet sit two dogs and a cat. 

"They motivated me to restart my life again." So beautiful. Read the full story here.

The evolution of motherhood laid out in this one panda video.

1.) Awww, she's so gentle with that tiny baby!

2) Oh, she's still picking him up by his head!

3) "Mom, I'm way too old for this!"

The personality of a cat summed up in one video.

"I know this is clearly where you eat, but I've decided it's my bed now and I'm not moving."

Watch how this sweet doggo shares his treat with a friend.

That little reassuring paw pat, though. "Hey buddy, you good." So darn sweet.

And then there are the goofy things humans do for fun.

Movies like to portray girls at sleepovers having pillow fights in their underwear, but this video is much closer to reality.

Woman gets invited on a sleepover by her 92-year-old grandpa who was feeling lonely.

Welp, I'm gonna need a tissue now. What a precious thing. Read the full story here.

Neighborhood kids teaching a boy how to ride a bike is just pure childhood goodness.

@heressometlcfoya

This made my heart melt. ❤️

This is what community looks like. Love to see it.

Kid comforts and peps up his teammate who was feeling inadequate.

Best teammate ever, indeed.

Hope that brought some sunshine to your day! Come back next week for another bright bouquet of the internet's best.

Planet

Easy (and free!) ways to save the ocean

The ocean is the heart of our planet. It needs our help to be healthy.

Ocean Wise

Volunteers at a local shoreline cleanup

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The ocean covers over 71% of the Earth’s surface and serves as our planet’s heart. Ocean currents circulate vital heat, moisture, and nutrients around the globe to influence and regulate our climate, similar to the human circulatory system. Cool, right?

Our ocean systems provide us with everything from fresh oxygen to fresh food. We need it to survive and thrive—and when the ocean struggles to function healthfully, the whole world is affected.

Pollution, overfishing, and climate change are the three biggest challenges preventing the ocean from doing its job, and it needs our help now more than ever. Humans created the problem; now humans are responsible for solving it.

#BeOceanWise is a global rallying cry to do what you can for the ocean, because we need the ocean and the ocean needs us. If you’re wondering how—or if—you can make a difference, the answer is a resounding YES. There are a myriad of ways you can help, even if you don’t live near a body of water. For example, you can focus on reducing the amount of plastic you purchase for yourself or your family.

Another easy way to help clean up our oceans is to be aware of what’s known as the “dirty dozen.” Every year, scientists release an updated list of the most-found litter scattered along shorelines. The biggest culprit? Single-use beverage and food items such as foam cups, straws, bottle caps, and cigarette butts. If you can’t cut single-use plastic out of your life completely, we understand. Just make sure to correctly recycle plastic when you are finished using it. A staggering 3 million tons of plastic ends up in our oceans annually. Imagine the difference we could make if everyone recycled!

The 2022 "Dirty Dozen" ListOcean Wise

If you live near a shoreline, help clean it up! Organize or join an effort to take action and make a positive impact in your community alongside your friends, family, or colleagues. You can also tag @oceanwise on social if you spot a beach that needs some love. The location will be added to Ocean Wise’s system so you can submit data on the litter found during future Shoreline Cleanups. This data helps Ocean Wise work with businesses and governments to stop plastic pollution at its source. In Canada, Ocean Wise data helped inform a federal ban on unnecessary single-use plastics. Small but important actions like these greatly help reduce the litter that ends up in our ocean.

Ocean Wise, a conservation organization on a mission to restore and protect our oceans, is focused on empowering and educating everyone from individuals to governments on how to protect our waters. They are making conservation happen through five big initiatives: monitoring and protecting whales, fighting climate change and restoring biodiversity, innovating for a plastic-free ocean, protecting and restoring fish stocks, and finally, educating and empowering youth. The non-profit believes that in order to rebuild a resilient and vibrant ocean within the next ten years, everyone needs to take action.

Become an Ocean Wise ally and share your knowledge with others. The more people who know how badly the ocean needs our help, the better! Now is a great time to commit to being a part of something bigger and get our oceans healthy again.

Innovation

A student accidentally created a rechargeable battery that could last 400 years

"This thing has been cycling 10,000 cycles and it’s still going." ⚡️⚡️

There's an old saying that luck happens when preparation meets opportunity.

There's no better example of that than a 2016 discovery at the University of California, Irvine, by doctoral student Mya Le Thai. After playing around in the lab, she made a discovery that could lead to a rechargeable battery that could last up to 400 years. That means longer-lasting laptops and smartphones and fewer lithium ion batteries piling up in landfills.

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How anger and irritability can disguise depression

Anger is such a weird emotion and it's totally not anger's fault. It's just existing for valid reasons but shows up when we feel like it shouldn't. The thing with anger is that in many cases it acts as a coat for an underlying emotion hiding that for some reason or another isn't ready to be revealed.

But sometimes anger is hiding something bigger than a fleeting emotion. Emma McAdam, Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and host of the YouTube channel, Therapy in a Nutshell, posted a video explaining how anger and irritability can actually be a symptom of depression.

The video really breaks down how the media portrays depression versus some of the lesser known symptoms of depression. When people think of depression, they often imagine someone that's extremely sad all the time and struggling to do basic skills. But depression can show up hidden behind other symptoms like irritability, insomnia, loss of appetite, and lack of focus.

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Mariandrea Villegas has talent and showmanship beyond her years.

Dance is a unique art form in that the medium it utilizes is the human body itself. Simply through purposeful and graceful control of movement, dancers can express and evoke joy, sadness, fear, confusion—the whole range of human emotion. And when dancing is done well, it's utterly mesmerizing.

Such is the case with Mariandrea, a 14-year-old from Mexico who auditioned for America's Got Talent in July of 2023 and wowed both the judges and the audience with her dance performance. She has been dancing since she was 5, and as Simon Cowell pointed out, it's clear that she was born to do this.

After showing off her sparkling personality during the pre-performance interview, Mariandrea danced to a cover of Tears for Fears' "Mad World," personifying the song in her performance. But it wasn't just her intentional movement that reflected the emotional complexity of the ever-popular hit. Her facial expressions, ranging from subtle fear to a clown-like smile to genuine sorrow to angry defiance, change on a dime, adding an acting element to her routine that takes it to the next level.

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How to end hunger, according to the people who face it daily

Here’s what people facing food insecurity want you to know about solving the hunger problem in America

Even though America is the world’s wealthiest nation, about 1 in 6 of our neighbors turned to food banks and community programs in order to feed themselves and their families last year. Think about it: More than 9 million children faced hunger in 2021 (1 in 8 children).

In order to solve a problem, we must first understand it. Feeding America, the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, released its second annual Elevating Voices: Insights Report and turned to the experts—people experiencing hunger—to find out how this issue can be solved once and for all.

Here are the four most important things people facing hunger want you to know.

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An ambulance, a Waffle House and an angry bison.

While the United States is undeniably one of the most culturally dominant countries in the world, its depth and complexity go far beyond what most people understand before seeing it for themselves.

The U.S. is a melting pot of diverse cultures, histories and landscapes, creating a rich and complex national tapestry that takes time and travel to truly comprehend. Heck, even Americans ourselves have a hard time understanding each other from time to time.

It's a place where every state can feel like its own little world, each with its own traditions, accents and cuisines. So, it’s understandable that when many people from around the world visit for the first time, there are some things they probably wished they had known ahead of time.

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Joy

Service dog flunks out of training school in spectacular fashion

The other dogs can't believe what they are seeing.

Double H Canine Academy in Louisville, Kentucky is a place where dog owners can take their rambunctious pets and have them turned into respectable members of the family.

However, as you can tell in this hilarious video, not all dogs are meant to follow orders.

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