Editor’s Picks — 2020. Some stories live forever
By: S M Mamunur Rahman
Tags: Creativity, Reading, Writing, Publication, The Masterpiece

Editor’s Picks

As we turned to go after him, he fled on his bicycle. And during the chase, he led us into an ambush, where he shot at me three times, hitting me once in the leg with a .45 caliber round.

After shooting me, he continued his rampage… ~ R. Scott

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We were walking down the Via Labicana, and then suddenly, it appeared right before my eyes. That mix of terror and admiration was now in my eyes.

I just stood there for 5 minutes without saying a word, heavy breathing, in awe. That monument I saw … ~ Felipe Xavier

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During that time, I was the perfect portrait of a young, lively person, with a promising career, a fresh liver, and unlimited access to tickets for any major sporting event. I was also doing an MBA, learning to fly helicopters, and driving around in a BMW — all at the same time — at the age of 29.

Needless to say, I had a lot of friends and a social life that made me feel like a celebrity.

Until I realized I wasn’t. ~ Daniele Ihns

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Aristotle was a young frustrated guy in Stagira, Greece. He was suffering from a thoughts-disease as he had opinions about everything in life. His mind never rested and always gave him this-and-that to produce unique thoughtful writings.

He had a Facebook account where he used to vomit… ~ S M Mamunur Rahman

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When the phone rang, and I looked at the caller id, I was paralyzed with fright. How should I sound when I answer, I thought?

By the end of the second ring, I just gave in and answered the damn phone call! ~ Cocoa Griot

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A Marketing job at Coca-Cola working directly with the two major sports events in the world? Pfff… Forget it! It doesn’t happen.

But, thanks to this black cat, and my fairy godmother, that was exactly what I got — a Marketing Manager job at Coca-Cola working directly with the FIFA World Cup and the Olympic Games. ~ Daniele Ihns

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I yelled at him, “Stop, Police, If you move, I will blow your fucking head off.”

This is not how I would typically talk to people during an arrest, but this was not a normal situation.

As I yelled at him, I started pulling back on the trigger of my weapon. I was ready to shoot this guy if he did not listen. ~ R. Scott

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Many years ago, when I first moved to France, I bought and started to renovate a two-hundred-year-old house that had been abandoned for decades.

The crooked stone walls and giant oak beams soon began to test both my skills and my fragile relationship with my bank manager. When offered a day a week of gardening work at a nearby manor house, I jumped… ~ Mike Alexander

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We all want to know each other on a deeper level, have meaningful and worthy conversations, and strengthen our relationships.

To do this, we need to go back to the beginning: back to square one and take a look at how we are communicating with our young and old loved ones — especially those quiet, shy, and reserved. ~ Shayla D. Potter

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I knew nearly nothing about my destination as it was the first time traveling to the southern part of India.

After a few minutes, it stopped on a stoppage, and a few people got on the bus. I saw them talking and laughing with each other. I turned around — a girl was sitting in a pensive-mood while the wind was playing with her long hair. At that very moment, I felt so helpless. Why? ~ S M Mamunur Rahman

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The marvelous thing is, this collective intention seems to behave in an economically sound manner — almost as if it takes into account the probabilities of an idea propagating or coming to fruition from each source before planting it there.

In other words, very similar ideas emerging in multiple minds around the same time — maybe the universe’s way of hedging her bets. ~ Prajakta unKNown

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The world in 1997 was like this — Diana, Princess of Wales, was killed in a car crash in Paris, Mother Teresa died in Calcutta, Tornado hit in Jarrell, Texas, killing 27 people. All that depressing, heartbreaking incidents happened in those days of 1997.

It is a text about a murder. What did you expect? Happy facts? ~ Felipe Xavier

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“Please find a good man and get married again,” James uttered those words out of pure love, and I cannot imagine how hard it was for him to say them.

“You are so young, honey. You have to get married again.”

“How can you ask me to do something like that?” I asked half incredulous and half touched. ~ Cocoa Griot

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As soon as people start to learn that you care for abandoned dogs, they start to drop boxes full of them at your door during the night.

Eventually, you also start to get calls from people denouncing mistreatment, and you go out to help because you just can’t sleep knowing that an animal is suffering. ~ Daniele Ihns

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Magic happens when you dare to say goodbye to your comfort zone and hit the road. You come across things that unknown — you hear the music unheard — you discover the beauty hidden from your very city-eyes.

All you need is to find some time to start your journey to the destination undefined. Leave the brick-walls and conditioned-air just for a day and see what happens under the sun. ~ S M Mamunur Rahman

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What humans have set up in terms of the killing machinery cannot be found in nature, in the flora, nor in bacteria, fungi, amphibians, mammals, among birds — nowhere.

Only we heartless human meatheads do that. ~ Karmen Jurela

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I know that there are other writers out there with similar views, but it seems we are a tiny minority; outliers in a world that would far rather read listicles about — Ten Ways to Get Rich on Medium — or — Sixty Sex Positions You Hadn’t Heard Of.

I am gradually coming to the sad understanding that the world doesn’t give a damn about the state of the planet we live in, or anything else to do with the environment. ~ Mike Alexander

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Iceland’s forestry service, earlier this year, makes a miraculous finding. They encourage their citizens to hug trees for five minutes a day to help them during social isolation. It may seem like an unusual practice, but research suggests that it could help people feel better.

So, I would encourage you to think about the benefits of hugging an ordinary-looking tree in your neighborhood. Can you dare yourself to hug a tree? ~ Rabia Akram

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I knew with some degree of certainty that it could not have been my wife’s phone. Hers was undergoing treatment after its third plunge into the toilet bowl in less than a fortnight. She had managed to resurrect it after the first two swimming lessons, but this time the prognosis wasn’t looking good.

My wife is the one woman I know who spends more time blow-drying her mobile phone than she does blow-dry her hair. ~ Mike Alexander

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Nicknamed ‘Dr. Checklist’, Peter Pronovost, in a 2006 pioneering study, proved the value of checklists for patient safety.

He devised medicine’s first checklist, what Gawande calls “an absurdly simple tool” for safely inserting a central line into a patient’s chest. A lifeline for delivering medication that gets infected in 4 percent of cases. ~ Zane Dickens

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It’s hard for you to skip your emotions while you feel hurt, tired, empty, or even neutral. Sometimes, you have a bad mood for no reason, and you suddenly feel fed up and anxious, which is something familiar we all go through.

It doesn’t need a lot of effort to uplift your mood, you only need a few simple things to do. ~ Sophia Lill

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You may say you did not mean it and told it only to be nice at that particular time. But when you make a promise to the other person, the other person will take it into account and expect that you will keep your words. It is fundamental.

Ask yourself, what do you expect when someone commits to you? ~ S M Mamunur Rahman

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It didn’t really matter what we were talking about — my responses to him would often be replete with statements like “I don’t totally disagree” or “I guess that’s not such a bad idea.” I did this intentionally, shutting down by putting up fussy lexical walls.

Frequently, I would let my personal feelings step in front of my… ~ Evan Wildstein

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Within three months, I went from weighing 245 pounds to 190 pounds. All it took was a traumatic event and tapping into my repressed childhood memories to hound on the weight-loss-journey every social media influencer tries to sell. ~ Bryson Owens

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We often head out stargazing in New Zealand’s incredible nature that so unmistakably writes all the rules. Out there in its sublime creation where the external circumstances can no longer contact us. All there ever exists is the abode above — an endless ocean of shimmering, glittering ornaments.

In those moments that I wish to last forever for its… ~ Kerstin Krause

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All of our back-and-forth in the private AOL chatroom became flirty, and our messages were full of innuendo. She confided she had a girlfriend. And a boyfriend. I found that enormously provocative.

She was an artist and entrepreneur who rode a motorcycle. She seemed wild and alive. I admitted I was… ~ M. H. Rubin

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High school is weird. It’s the human version of the Discovery Channel. You have one group of savage primates next to another, and all of them are very anal about letting anyone into their folds.

The hipsters bitch about the football players; the cheerleaders avoid the anime kids, and the stoners don’t care about any of it and keep getting baked. It all screams identity crisis. ~ Isaiah McCall

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In the months leading up to my birthday, I started to question everything and resist all the good things in my life. Of course, it didn’t help that the doom of 2020 was looming over my 25th. It added to the whole quarter-life crisis mantra I had created.

I woke up thinking about all the things I was supposed to have by this point in my life, and the only thing I could focus on was how my life was falling apart.~ Venessa Amber

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Our chambered hearts are waiting for a catastrophe like a revolver’s cylinder waiting for a bullet. Catastrophe is what we are made for, what our whispering shadows long for. It’s our destiny. If it hasn’t found you yet, it’s coming. Calamity is one of the few things we can count on.

But what looks like disaster isn’t always. Even the very wise cannot see all ends. The story isn’t over until it’s over, and until it is, we are in no position to say what was a disaster and what was not. ~ Ryan Frawley

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My girls spun to face me and nodded with sincerity. “Yes, that’s what she said, you have to come, collect us in our classrooms! Bye!”

Then they disappeared like Tinker bell into the foliage of Neverland leaving ma and me to scramble back to our feet. The other parents had already begun to shuffle away, and there was a moment of silence. ~ Walter Rhein

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I put on my very first pair of heels at the age of 12. They were cheap little things with a small heel (probably around two inches) — but they were mine. For the first time, I did not borrow my mother’s shoes. For the first time, they fit properly. I felt like a star.

What was the occasion, you may ask? ~ Marija Martincevic

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When you watch the television, the television is not watching you. When you see the billboard, the billboard is not seeing you, and vast numbers of people see the same thing on television and see the same billboards.

When you use these new designs, social media search, YouTube, — when you see these things — you’re being observed constantly and algorithms are taking that information and changing what you see next. ~ S M Mamunur Rahman