Chicken Soup for the Soul 20th Anniversary Edition by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Amy Newmark, Heidi Krupp

danced every dance as if we were passionate lovers, which is exactly what we were.
    I could go on forever about our experiences, and yet there would be no way to convey to you exactly how we felt. How would you feel when you arrived at your hotel in Moscow, if there were a telephone message waiting for you, written in Russian, from Mikhail Gorbachev’s office saying he regretted he could not meet with you that weekend because he would be out of town, but instead he had arranged for your entire group to meet for two hours in a roundtable discussion with about a half-dozen members of the Central Committee? We had an extremely frank discussion about everything, including sex.
    How would you feel if more than a dozen old ladies, wearing babushkas, came down from the steps of their apartment buildings and hugged and kissed you? How would you feel when your guides, Tanya and Natasha, told you and the whole group that they had never seen anyone like you? And when we left, all 30 of us cried because we had fallen in love with these fabulous women, and they with us. Yes, how would you feel? Probably just like us.
    Each of us had our own experience, of course, but the collective experience bears out one thing for certain: The only way we are ever going to ensure peace on this planet is to adopt the entire world as “our family.” We are going to have to hug them, and kiss them. And dance and play with them. And we are going to have to sit and talk and walk and cry with them. Because when we do, we’ll be able to see that, indeed, everyone is beautiful, and we all complement each other so beautifully, and we would all be poorer without each other. Then the saying, “I know you, you’re just like me!” will take on a mega-meaning of, “This is ‘my family,’ and I will stand by them no matter what!”
    ~Stan Dale

The Gentlest Need
    I pet her and she pays me back in purrs.
    ~Terri Guillemets
    A t least once a day our old black cat comes to one of us in a way that we’ve all come to see as a special request. It does not mean he wants to be fed or to be let out or anything of that sort. His need is for something very different.
    If you have a lap handy, he’ll jump into it; if you don’t, he’s likely to stand there looking wistful until you make him one. Once in it, he begins to vibrate almost before you stroke his back, scratch his chin and tell him over and over what a good kitty he is. Then his motor really revs up; he squirms to get comfortable; he “makes big hands.” Every once in a while one of his purrs gets out of control and turns into a snort. He looks at you with wide-open eyes of adoration, and he gives you the cat’s long slow blink of ultimate trust.
    After a while, little by little, he quiets down. If he senses that it’s all right, he may stay in your lap for a cozy nap. But he is just as likely to hop down and stroll away about his business. Either way, he’s all right.
    Our daughter puts it simply: “Blackie needs to be purred.”
    In our household he isn’t the only one who has that need: I share it and so does my wife. We know the need isn’t exclusive to any one age group. Still, because I am a schoolman as well as a parent, I associate it especially with youngsters, with their quick, impulsive need for a hug, a warm lap, a hand held out, a coverlet tucked in, not because anything’s wrong, not because anything needs doing, just because that’s the way they are.
    There are a lot of things I’d like to do for all children. If I could do just one, it would be this: to guarantee every child, everywhere, at least one good purring every day.
    Kids, like cats, need time to purr.
    ~Fred T. Wilhelms

Bopsy
    I can think of no more stirring symbol of man’s humanity to man than a fire engine.
    ~Kurt Vonnegut
    T he 26-year-old mother stared down at her son who was dying of leukemia. Although her heart was filled with sadness, she also had a strong feeling of determination. Like any parent she wanted her