“This story isn’t true. But it happens every day.”
Welcome back to Infinite Threads: Conversations on Love, Connection, and Compassion.
I’m your host, Bob Barnett — and today’s episode is going to be a little different.
Most days on this podcast, I talk with you — from the heart — about life, love, and how we treat one another.
But today, I want to show you something.
Not through discussion.
Through a story.
It’s a story I wrote.
It isn’t true — not in the literal sense.
But it happens every day.
It’s the story of a boy.
A boy who was good.
A boy who was kind.
And how the world slowly taught him to stop believing that mattered.
This is the story of Elias.
He was born on a warm spring morning, wrapped in secondhand blankets and sunlight.
His mother, Mariah, was seventeen. Scared. But when she held him, she believed love could be enough.
And for a while… it was.
Elias chased frogs. He kissed caterpillars.
He thought fireflies were stars that came down just to visit him.
He was a gentle soul.
The kind who gave away his sandwich without waiting to be thanked.
The kind who felt joy just seeing someone else smile.
He was light.
But the world…
Isn’t always gentle with the gentle.
The lights began to dim when Elias was nine.
His mother started disappearing at night, coming home with bruises and tears she tried to hide.
Elias tried to be good.
Tried to be quiet.
Tried to be small.
At eleven, he stole a loaf of bread.
Not because he was a thief —
But because his belly hurt worse than his guilt.
At thirteen, he stopped raising his hand in class.
At fifteen, he stopped going altogether.
And the streets… noticed.
By eighteen, he had a new name: Ghost.
A new family —
The kind that didn’t ask questions.
The kind that taught you how to survive, but not how to hope.
And then, one night… everything cracked.
A robbery.
A man hurt.
A sentence handed down: eight years.
It should’ve been the end.
But it wasn’t.
In prison, Elias met a chaplain named Father Thomas.
Not the preaching kind.
The listening kind.
One day, Elias tried to explain himself —
Why he ended up there, what went wrong, what the world had done to him.
Father Thomas looked at him and said:
“You don’t need to justify pain.
You need to heal from it.”
And that…
Stuck.
Elias began to write.
He wrote stories about the boy he used to be —
The one who believed in fireflies and forgiveness.
The one who didn’t think kindness had to be earned.
One of those stories was published in a prison literacy journal.
A child wrote back.
“I want to be kind like the boy in your story.”
Elias wept for hours.
When he got out…
He wasn’t Ghost anymore.
He was Elias again.
He started working with kids like he’d been.
The unseen ones.
The ones people labeled “bad” before they ever got to tell their story.
He told them the truth:
“You’re not broken.
You’re not bad.
You’re just waiting for someone to believe in your light.”
And every time someone asked him how he made it out, he’d say:
“No child is born bad.
But they can be forgotten.”
This story isn’t true.
But it’s also not a lie.
There are Eliases everywhere.
In our schools.
In our shelters.
In our cells.
And there is still light beneath their ashes.
The world teaches us to look away from the broken.
To harden our hearts.
To label people “lost causes.”
But if you stop…
If you listen…
You’ll hear something faint.
Something still glowing.
Sometimes…
All it takes is for someone to believe the light is still there.
So be that someone.
Be the spark.
This has been Infinite Threads.
I’m Bob Barnett.
And love…
Is the thread that mends us.
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