Crystal breathed in the sweet January air. It was a cold, sunny day. Sunlight shone between the branches and fell onto the street.

It was so quiet, this neighborhood. Wandering down the road at a leisurely pace, Crystal noticed an open curtain in the window of one neighbor. They were busily typing on their home network. Remote workers, obviously.

Crystal’s glance shifted to a kid who had just come home from school. He looked down to the cell phone in his hand.

“Hey，kid!” Crystal waved.

The boy didn’t raise head, some game keeping his attention.

Crystal sighed and closed her eyes. It took her back to when she was a little girl back in the late 1980s. Neighbors knew each other by name then. Crystal’s best friend Anne was the next door neighbor. They often played for hours using imaginary names for far-off places, pretending to be or do something they hoped someday they could be or do.

Nowadays, to pretend to be somewhere else, you could just click on some random program for a virtual reality video of Italy or Australia, and your wish was instantly satisfied. You could do that alone. And if you needed a person to chat with, you could pick a random person in your interest group online.

“You don’t need neighbors anymore,” Crystal commented to herself.

And yet, there is so much that can be missed for the simpler times. Those who grow up not knowing the invisible person-to-person simplicity of being a good neighbor, have missed an entire piece in their maturity. It’s not about personal space. It’s about being there for another person. How could a metal chip replace a life? Crystal could never understand.

As she turned onto her home sidewalk, she noticed a little girl about 5 years old looking confused and afraid. There was no coat on her thin arms. Must be some neighbor’s girl. Crystal was very concerned. W here were her parents?

“Are you alright, honey?” Crystal asked.

I’d thought I was ready for the challenges of graduate school. But when I left Nepal to further my study abroad, I felt as if I had dropped into the vast ocean where every fish swam faster than I could. The coursework wore me out. Instead of being the outgoing person I had been, I suddenly became a shy girl. Worse still, my research was not progressing at the pace I had expected.

I needed something to return to my old self. After a conversation with my friend, I thought I should go to help others. Then I began to search online for volunteer opportunities. Luckily, a local organization that drives senior citizens to their destinations was looking for volunteers. I thought it might be just what I needed.

I was a bit anxious before my first ride, as I had not interacted much with people outside school. But I quickly recovered my poise when I picked up an old woman who wanted to go downtown. She talked with me like my grandmother and shared how thankful she was. Connections like this and the smiles on my passengers’ faces encouraged me to continue driving.

I started to volunteer about three hours every weekend — time I otherwise would have spent oversleeping or looking through information on social media. Sharing stories with my passengers was rewarding. And seeing how eager they were to spend time going out inspired me to think about how to spend my time which used to slip away.

As my confidence grew, I began opening up to my fellow graduate students about the ups and downs in my research and was surprised to discover that all my fellows faced the same challenge—even the student who I had considered to be on top of everything. As these connections grew, my natural personality began to reappear.

Mr. Brown worked in a factory of a small town. He had been there for twenty years before one day he was sent to the capital for important business. He was quite excited because he had never been there before. Before he set off, he asked his wife and three daughters if they wanted him to buy something for them in London. Mrs. Brown began to think it over and then she said she wished her husband would be able to buy a nice umbrella for her, and so did their three daughters. As he was afraid he would forget it, he drew an umbrella on his hand. To his regret, he lost it at the station.

On the train Mr. Brown sat opposite to an old woman. The woman’s umbrella was so nice that he carefully looked at it and said to himself not to forget to buy a few umbrellas like it. When the train arrived at the station in London, he said goodbye to the old woman, took his bag and her umbrella and was going to get off.

“Wait a minute, sir, ” shouted the old woman. “That’s my umbrella!” Now Mr. Brown noticed that he had taken her umbrella. His face turned red at once and said in a hurry, “Oh, I’m very sorry, Madam!I didn’t mean it!”

Seven days later Mr. Brown left the capital. To his surprise, he met the old woman and sat opposite to her again. Looking at the four umbrellas, the old woman was satisfied with herself. “It seems that I had a better result than the other four women. ”She thought.