In a world driven by technology, competition, and constant change, the true value of humanity often fades behind the screens of our digital lives. The 21st century has brought incredible progress — artificial intelligence, global communication, and medical miracles — but at the same time, it has created a silent crisis: the decline of kindness and genuine human connection. Kindness, once seen as a natural part of life, is now a conscious choice that must be protected and practiced every day.
Kindness is not just about smiling at strangers or offering help to the poor. It is a universal language that connects hearts and builds trust between people. A kind word can heal emotional pain faster than any medicine. A single act of generosity can inspire hope in someone who has lost faith in humanity.
Unfortunately, modern society often measures success by wealth, power, and fame — forgetting that true greatness lies in compassion. In today’s world, many people are so busy chasing their goals that they forget the importance of simple human gestures. We scroll through social media seeing tragedies and suffering, yet we often move on without feeling empathy. Virtual likes have replaced real emotions, and digital messages have replaced face-to-face communication. But humanity cannot survive on technology alone. Without empathy, the world becomes colder, lonelier, and more divided.
The COVID-19 pandemic reminded us of how fragile life is and how much we depend on one another. During that time, we witnessed incredible examples of kindness — doctors risking their lives, volunteers helping the poor, and neighbors supporting each other. Those moments proved that no matter how advanced technology becomes, the heart of humanity still beats with compassion.
To restore kindness in the 21st century, we must begin with ourselves. It starts with small things — listening carefully, forgiving easily, and helping without expecting anything in return. Educational institutions and families should teach young generations not only knowledge but also empathy, respect, and moral values. Governments and organizations must promote social responsibility and create opportunities for people to do good. Kindness is contagious. When we treat others with respect and care, they pass it on.
Imagine a world where every person chooses kindness — there would be less hate, fewer conflicts, and stronger communities. Humanity’s future depends not on machines or money but on how we treat one another. The 21st century is not only the era of innovation — it should also be the era of compassion. Kindness does not make us weak; it makes us human. In every heart, there is a light of goodness. When we let that light shine, we make the world a better, warmer, and more peaceful place for all.
Dildora Khojyozova is a third-year student at Urgench State University, majoring in Geography. She is an active, creative, and ambitious young researcher with a strong passion for education, honesty, and environmental protection. Dildora has successfully participated in various academic projects, conferences, and writing competitions, earning several certificates and awards for her outstanding achievements. She is also one of the active members of the “Map of Honesty” project, which promotes transparency, integrity, and fair competition among organizations and educational institutions. Through this initiative, she aims to inspire young people to value honesty and social responsibility. Dildora believes that kindness, hard work, and knowledge can change the world for the better. Her ultimate dream is to become a well-known scholar, continue her studies abroad, and contribute to the sustainable development and bright future of Uzbekistan.
At least among the general public, Charles Bukowski has probably been the most influential American poet since World War II. His exceptionally short lines, his abandonment of rhymes and formal rhythms, and his themes (women, booze, gambling, jadedness, and economic distress) have inspired many — especially young men — to follow his approach. This is true for Taylor Dibbert as well. (He even invokes Bukowski’s approval in one of his poems.)
Every entry in ON THE ROCKS is grounded on drinking, whether he is reflecting on his love life, his divorce, the death of a beloved pet, his Peace Corps experiences, or the ordinary, mundane, events of his life — all of which are celebrated or consoled with one or more of his favorite beverages.
He is asked in the volume’s first poem why he enjoys writing poetry and his reply is personal before it becomes philosophical:
The search for freedom
The examination of pain
Revisiting old scars and
Processing fresh wounds
Readying myself for the fresh trauma and triumphs ahead
And he closes his mediation with a description of poetry’s effect on poet and receiver alike:
The urgent need to get to the point
And the fact that there is nowhere to hide
This statement is, I believe, the appeal for the Bukowski style. There is little or no metaphor, no fancy language, no flowery flights of fancy, no obscure vocabulary. I’m not sure how truly autobiographical Bukowski is — after all, in his work he refers to himself as Henry Chinaski — but nearly all his poems are relatable to readers who have experienced similar events or feelings; the unapologetic persona seems honest to a fault, using language that is easy to understand and relate to on a personal level.
Dibbert here follows Bukowski’s direction. After reading ON THE ROCKS we should all be able to form a clear opinion of Dibbert’s personality, his character, and his history in an empathetic way.
Md. Mahbubul Alam is from Bangladesh. His writer name is Mahbub John in Bangladesh. He is a Senior Teacher (English) of Harimohan Government High School, Chapainawabganj, Bangladesh. Chapainawabganj is a district town of Bangladesh. He is an MA in English Literature from Rajshahi College under National University. He has published three books of poems in Bangla. He writes mainly poems but other branches of literature such as prose, article, essay etc. also have been published in national and local newspapers, magazines, little magazines. He has achieved three times the Best Teacher Certificate and Crest in National Education Week in the District Wise Competition in Chapainawabganj District. He has gained many literary awards from home and abroad. His English writings have been published in Synchronized Chaos for seven years.
Contributor Taylor Dibbert seeks reviewers for his new poetry bookOn the Rocks.Please email us at synchchaos@gmail.com if you’re interested.
Also, we will stop accepting submissions for November’s first issue on October 25th. You may still submit after that date, but your work will go into our second issue for the month.
Now, for this month’s second issue, Learning From History.
Sayani Mukherjee muses on the rise and fall of the Roman Empire.
Kelly Moyer’s film, created together with Hunter Sauvage and starring Robert P. Moyer and Annie, draws on ancient myth to understand the United States’ modern political situation. Abigail George analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of certain leadership styles illustrated by Donald Trump and several African leaders. Patricia Doyne speaks to the hubris of American political leadership. Andrew Brindle and Christina Chin’s tan-rengas explore society’s injustices and contradictions.
Patrick Sweeney’s one-line senryus decenter the author as head of the universe. Mark Young contributes a fresh set of altered geographies. Baskin Cooper describes encounters slightly mysterious and askance. Christopher Bernard describes the frenzied, ghostly glamour of Cal Performances’ recent production of Red Carpet.
Mahbub Alam extols the beauty of morning and nature in his Bangladeshi home. Jonathan Butcher’s poetry explores the different rooms in which we make our lives and the stories they could tell about us. J.T. Whitehead shows how external cleaning can parallel interior personal development. Srijani Dutta discusses her personal spiritual journey in prayer to the divine of at least a few faiths.
Alexandros Stamatoulakis announces his new novel The Lonely Warrior: In the Wings of the Condor, about a man discovering himself in the midst of a tumultuous modern environment. Chris Butler’s wry poetry explores long-lasting, but hopefully not implacable, truisms of the human condition. Ana Glendza speaks to the fear and insecurities that come with being human. Kavi Nielsen speaks to the experience of loneliness and rejection.
Noah Berlatsky satirizes faux-human tech support and our efforts to understand our whole world through technology. Timothee Bordenave outlines innovative ways to improve electricity transmission as Abdurofiyeva Taxmina Avazovna discusses treatments for cataracts.
Zarifaxon O’rinboyeva’s short story presents a woman overcoming poverty and grief to become a physician. Doug Hawley reflects on the ups and downs of summer jobs. Turdiyeva Guloyim’s poetic essay shares a complex emotional tapestry of childhood village memories. Rahmataliyeva Aidakhon highlights the importance of grasping folktales to understanding Uzbek heritage and culture. Madina Azamjon highlights the literary importance of Hamid Olimjon’s writing and how he drew on Uzbek folk culture for inspiration. Gulsanam Qurbonova extols the linguistic and cultural education she has received at her university. Ermatova Dilorom Bakhodirjonova explains the intertwined nature of Uzbek language and culture and the need to preserve both.
Mukhammadjonova Ugiloy celebrates her school and the sports and student leadership education she received there. Choriyeva Oynur outlines benefits of integrating technology into education. Abdirashidova Ozoda outlines the importance of encouraging and fostering creativity for preschool students. Nilufar Mo’ydinova discusses ways to encourage second language acquisition at an early age.
Anila Bukhari’s poetry celebrates the creative spirit surviving amid poverty and oppression. Taro Hokkyo’s prose poem details his protagonist’s escape from emotional and spiritual darkness to rise to the heights of creativity. Alan Catlin’s barman odyssey explores the roots of creative inspiration.
Emran Emon speaks to the recent Nobel Prize award for world literature and the value of writing. Abdusalimova Zukhraxon outlines strategies for teaching the Uzbek language to foreign students. Abdusaidova Jasmina Quvondiqovna shares some of her art and expresses her pride in her native Uzbekistan. Jumanazarova Munojot Elmurod qizi suggests ways to help young children learn to tell time. Qurbonova Madinaxon discusses the importance of games and play in children’s education. Hayotkhon Shermatova outlines issues with Uzbekistan’s educational system and how to address them. Azamova Kumushoy illustrates the importance of teaching language students how to analyze literary texts.
Ismoilova Gulmira celebrates the strength, thoughtfulness, creativity and resilience of Uzbek girls and young women. Abduqahhorova Gulhayo’s poem takes joy in the grace and kindness of young Uzbek girls. Svetlana Rostova finds beauty in everything, even ugliness, loss, and death.
Graciela Noemi Villaverde praises the creative insight of her dance teacher. Saparov Akbar outlines his personal quests and passions and his desire to educate himself and elevate his life. Mesfakus Salahin’s poetry celebrates the artistic inspiration that can come from romantic love.
J.J. Campbell details his middle-aged, disillusioned quest for love or maybe just a little break from reality. Donia Sahib speaks to spiritual and earthly love. Teresa Nocetti’s poem urges a loved one to invite her into their life. Eva Petropoulou Lianou shares a tale of lovers in search for one another.
Mykyta Ryzhykh presents a protagonist who explores alternatives and then revels in his ordinary humanity. H. Mar. shares the joy of day-to-day human companionship.
We hope this issue provides artistic, emotional, and intellectual companionship to you as you peruse the various contributions.
“The reality of being human is to hope against hope. The believing that there is a meaning to life when we have every reason to believe that we are made of dirt and buried as ash, believing that things will turn out okay when we live in a world with no guarantees and a thousand unhappy endings, believing in humanity even after you’ve watched your kind start wars and commit murders, believing in kindness even after you’ve seen evil.”
There is something violently beautiful about pain, and the birth of the stars is no exception. Choking on ash, collapsing and burning, something so tragic can become beautiful, just in a matter of seconds. And then they die, and it all is forgotten.
This, of course, is far besides the point, but it lives in my mind most days. I, too, am a container for horror, and making it look effortless. I, too, know how to be born in an awful world, and not scream.
I have become a slave to ecstacy, not the drug, but the belief that everything will be okay. A cruel hope, if you will. I suppose I have a tendency to turn everything in my life tragic or manic, but eighteen years a slave will do that to a person. It is cruel, I think, to an extent, to be born so dependent on happiness. It is cruel that we are able to manufacture it, if we just close our eyes.
And so, we let it continue.
Here are the rules of living in a suburbia: don’t open your eyes, don’t shake your head, and whatever you do, don’t think. Of course, nothing bad will happen if you do think, but hope is a dangerous thing to have, and an even more dangerous thing to lose. And besides, the act of pretending is better if you don’t think: less painful.
I have heard when stars are born, a whole universe collapses, a universe made of ash and clouds of dust. I reach out to touch it, the fear, the ache, but I cannot reach it. I cannot feel it. I cannot feel anything at all.
My mother used to tell me that there is a place, a place between life and death, where all you see is a blinding light, so fierce it overwhelms you. I chose not to tell her I’d felt this way for years.
Evil doesn’t die, it is reborn and reborn like a star.
I used to think that murder was savage. I thought that when you were dragged off, you would leave trails of rose petals like blood behind you, crimson staining the cream-fleshed snow. But that is not what murder is like, not at all. You are unpeeled, slowly, like the leaves of a hibiscus flower, and left to take your last shallow breaths, your heart beating within your ribs, your life forgotten already.
You are like a lamb, made for the slaughter.
But of course, all beautiful things are wicked, dead or alive.
Girl: As a Ship in a Bottle
¨Please¨, I would repeat, over and over again, looking to the stars in the sky. ¨Let me be free.¨ After the shipwreck, nobody had any words for me other than I’m Sorry. The word was etched into the table I ate at, and sketched into the books I would read. I’m Sorry, I’m Sorry, I’m Sorry. I had no eyes, no ears, no mouth, I had taken them all off so I could no longer notice. The strangers had begun mailing them, sending the I’m Sorry’s small and neatly packed, and when all the boxes and drawers overflowed, I began to keep them in a jar.
At first the idea had seemed faultless. Stacking them up into neat diamond shapes, the well wishes became smaller and smaller, until I seldom felt them crawling up the murky depths of my throat. Seldom felt them like a sickness. It became like a twisted little game, or a song, shoving the pillow over my head, ignoring the chorus of words coming from my bedside cabinet. But still, I could walk, I could run, I could sing, and so I did- sing until the sky faded away, and my boyfriend was gone, and I was all alone, left- to shove a pillowcase over my head to drown out the noise.
The medium of my memories never ceased to recreate itself, taking the form of a little creature or a gaunt damsel tiptoeing across acres/fields. Death, in its ominous omniscience never shows it’s true form, as not to lose it’s mysery. No, rather it stomps and roars in it’s anger, and the I’m Sorry’s just kept coming. When the jar too was filled, I took out a bottle, and set it on the table, waiting. I pulled myself under the covers. It was too dark. And when the next letter came, I grabbed it, meaning to toss it into the sea.
I Love You, I’m Sorry.
Underneath the easel by the table, I glanced at the food on a nearby plate. It’s been tagged-, well wishes, Liz- and I was underneath the easel. Had they painted me on a cross, the me that they wanted to see? I was a legend.
I was a hoax.
I glanced down at the bottle, the one full of secrets and false promises. The one that had kept me within it. Victim, survivor, some sort of chivalrous martyr. And as I set it- to drift, not to sink- I whispered something.
¨Let me out of the bottle.¨
The Dream
“If you were loved in a dream, does it count? That love- does it count?”
reference, The God of Small Things
What is love?
An addiction, perhaps? It’s an addicting feeling, and you just can’t be fully happy once you find out that it exists.
To a person who isn’t loved, attention is the closest thing you will ever feel. You will save it, scrap it. You will treasure it. You will earn it. You will do anything for it.
To a person who isn’t loved, violence is stronger than any kiss.
I have this friend.
I built her out of memories.
I miss her some nights- she now lives in the sky.
Does grief count as love? Perhaps hatred of what you never had is proof of something you could have had.
Perhaps that’s why the abused search for abuse and murder.
Sickness leads to pity, and pity can feel like love. Pity can lead to abuse. Abuse can also feel like love. So maybe I want to be sick.
That’s the thing, right? Have you ever wanted something so badly your knees buckled, and your lips trembled, and you felt like you could die? Didn’t you feel alive? Wouldn’t you do anything to feel that want?
Does that sound crazy? Does it? You feel like a wolf feeding off scraps of what other people own.
Mentally ill, they call you. Not alone or desperately lonely. Not made of other people’s actions. Somehow you have become what they have done. Somehow it has become on you.
Well as long as it is your fault, you have to point this out: it wasn’t as if it wasn’t warranted. It wasn’t as if you hadn’t spent thousands of nights alone in your own mind, so who could blame you for becoming what you did?
And that’s the problem, right? When you’re alone in your head? So you start to make some friends.
In the Play “My First Ex-Husband” Ex-Wives Discover Their Superpower
Joy Behar exposes marital complexities with caustic & hilarious wit currently touring at a city near you…
By Jacques Fleury
Joy Behar, legendary comedienne and co-host of The View, gives us an intrepid and authentic adaptation of true stories with serrated comicality–minus any sort of politically correct filters. The play is an introspective of the often-muddled hysterical realities of love, sex, and relationships. Whether you’re joyfully united, guardedly devoted, or considering altering the locks, relationships are intricate—and collectively associable. These stories could be all our stories, except wittier. The basic premise of the show is every weekend, an ensemble of four stars from theatre, television, and film join the show, bringing their inimitable dispositions to voice these tales that may be uncannily familiar to you or someone you know. Shocking yet profoundly germane to the times, this show will reverberate with anyone who has piloted the tempestuous and often prickling seas of love. In addition to other titillating surprises, the show contests and questions ideologies of patriarchal authority, blind loyalty, self-esteem, physical and psychological abuse, gaslighting, subservience, physical and emotional constraints, lack of respect and more…The play showed to sold out crowds at the Huntington Calderwood at the Boston Center for the Arts in September of 2025 and will resume touring possibly in a city near you. According to the My First Ex-Husband website pending performances will at the following cities: Florida, California, Washington, Colorado, Texas, Connecticut and more…
“The stories are very relatable,” utters playwright Joy Behar. “Even if you never got a divorce, you still have problems with in-laws…or sex, or kids, or money… Marriage is a work in process all the time.” Behar was emphatic about how “true” the ex-husband stories are but said that they were admittedly tweaked for dramatic effects…A touchy yet facetious aspect of the play was when members of the “Ex-Husband” ensemble related tales of how their husbands used to cause them to feel insecure by poking fun at their weight, or “subtly hinting” that they need to improve their appearances to fit their husband’s standards of beauty. The fat jokes scored big and landed like a hilarious thud with audience members.
My First Ex-Husband is a visceral emotionally charged experience that explores and shatters any preconceived notions of marital uniformity. It extrapolates on the gradations, conceptions and misconceptions of marriage lore. With her signature brand of dynamic caustic and facetious wit, Joy Behar “brought it” to the Calderwood Pavilion stage at Boston Center for the Arts along with three of her equally funny female cohorts: Veanne Cox, Judy Gold, and Tonya Pinkins.
When you are embarking on the often symbiotic and potentially precarious journey of marriage, the core of you are could pose as a barrier or asset depending on who you married and your ever evolving marital circumstances. The play “My First Ex-Husband” can serve as a cautionary tale when entering marriage or any type of relationships in your lifetime. Times Square Chronicle declares that My First Ex-Husband “appeals to men, women, and anyone who has ever been in a relationship.” And I couldn’t agree more…
We are entering the dawn of a post “Me Too Movement” era, where women find personal freedom to discover their own versions of their authentic selves while redefining their own notion of beauty, not what their husbands or patriarchal society’s vision of what they think beautiful should be… In the grand scheme of things, I think until you get to know yourself and find out what your source of power is, you’ll be disconnected from the world hence you would only be moved by external circumstances, not discovering that you’re the one who makes things happen. In “My First Ex-Husband,” the women discover not only that their super power is self-love and self-respect but also that “true love” is one that frees not imprisons.
“My First Ex-Husband” has prodigious comic timing and socially conscious substance suitable to the times… A witty, emotionally charged and colorful artistic theatrical brush stroke of daring dramedy! I give this in-your-face smartly premeditated rumpus a 5 out of 5 stars!
Jacques Fleury
Jacques Fleury is a Boston Globe featured Haitian-American Poet, Educator, Author of four books and literary arts student at Harvard University online. His latest publication “You Are Enough: The Journey to Accepting Your Authentic Self” & other titles are available at Public Libraries, the University of Massachusetts Healey Library, Wyoming University, Askews and Holts in the United Kingdom, The Harvard Book Store, amazon etc. His works appeared in publications such as Wilderness House Literary Review, Muddy River Poetry Review, Litterateur Redefining World anthologies out of India, the Cornell University Press anthology Class Lives: Stories from Our Economic Divide among others. Visit him at:http://www.authorsden.com/jacquesfleury
Jacques Fleury’s book You Are Enough: The Journey Towards Understanding Your Authentic Self
