There’s a quiet weight that comes with wanting to help others when you’re just one person. It’s a desire born from empathy, from seeing the struggles around you and feeling that pull to do something—anything—to make a difference. But the reality is, no matter how much you care or how hard you try, you can’t be everywhere at once. You can’t save everyone. And that’s a truth I’ve had to wrestle with time and again.
The world is full of people who need support—whether it’s a kind word, a helping hand, or just someone to listen. I’ve always believed that everyone deserves that care, that chance to feel seen and valued. But being one person means facing a hard limit: my time, my energy, my resources—they’re finite. So, I’ve had to learn how to prioritize, not because some people are more “worthy” than others, but because some are falling through the cracks while others have a safety net to catch them.
It’s a bit like triage, I suppose. In a crisis, you don’t start with the person who’s already stable—you focus on the one who’s bleeding out. Not because the stable person doesn’t matter, but because they’re more likely to make it without immediate help. In life, it’s not always that dramatic, but the principle holds. There are people who have support systems—family, friends, communities—who can step in when they stumble. Then there are those who don’t. The ones who are alone, overlooked, or teetering on the edge with no one to notice. Those are the ones I feel drawn to, the ones I try to reach first.
Prioritizing doesn’t mean ignoring everyone else. It’s not a judgment on who’s “deserving” or “undeserving”—everyone deserves kindness, everyone deserves care. But it’s about recognizing where the gaps are. If I spread myself too thin, trying to help every single person I come across, I risk burning out and helping no one at all. So I’ve had to get strategic. Who’s slipping through the cracks right now? Who’s got no one else in their corner? That’s where I start.
It’s not a perfect system. There are days when I second-guess myself, wondering if I’ve missed someone who needed me more. There are nights when I lie awake thinking about the people I couldn’t reach, the ones I didn’t have time for. But I remind myself that being one person doesn’t mean I have to fix everything—it means doing what I can, where I can, with what I’ve got. And sometimes, that’s enough to make a ripple.
Helping others isn’t about grand gestures or saving the world single-handedly. It’s about showing up, consistently, for the people who might otherwise be forgotten. It’s about listening to the quiet cries for help that get drowned out by louder voices. It’s about knowing that even if I can’t be there for everyone, I can still be there for someone—and that’s a start.
So, I keep going. I prioritize the ones who are falling through the cracks, not because they’re the only ones who matter, but because they’re the ones who might not make it otherwise. And in the process, I hold onto the hope that maybe, just maybe, others will step up too. Because if enough of us—each just one person—start filling those gaps, we might actually catch everyone who’s falling.
xx hugs
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