This week Awesome Stories brings you bridge building, solar leaves, good neighbors, and relationships.

Building Bridges

In a world awash in wars, political divisiveness, and social challenges, we could benefit from better relationship skills. This article talks about building bridges of love for personal relationships but can be applied to any situation or relationship. At the core of most of the world’s problems are relationships in need of more love, understanding, listening and respect. Rabbi Noach Orlowek suggests the three As; attention, affection, and appreciation. Practice them with your friends and easy situations so that when you encounter a challenging situation, you will have the skill ingrained as a habit

New Solar Device

This device uses the energy of the sun directly and doesn’t need any electricity or external energy, ~ Mohammad Asadi.

Researchers have cooked up an interesting approach to mitigating CO2 and climate change. Scientists have created an artificial solar leaf device that absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere and uses sunlight to turn the CO2 into usable gas. The gas can be used directly or turned into other fuels. The nice part is the gas would be carbon neutral with no net damage to the environment. The challenge will be taking it from the laboratory to production at a competitive price. They estimate being able to produce gas for about $2/ gallon.

Good Neighbors

The citizens of Lesvos, Greece certainly know about being good neighbors. During the refugee crisis of 2015, the island of Lesvos welcomed about 300,000 people fleeing their countries. Watch this short trailer showing the islanders who offered their homes, food, clothes washing and most importantly, kindness to the refugees. The filmmakers wanted to remind us about the power of kindness, and the real wealth found in our hearts, not our possessions.

Harmonious Relationships

It only matters that we’re human beings living on the same planet … trying to make sense of this life . ~ James George

James George offers his wisdom gleaned from 25 years of being a diplomat and 86 years on the planet. He believes a diplomat is one who harmonizes and helps reduce fear and conflict. What ultimately matters is to bring harmony to disparate groups and finding the common human needs and desires. Now he’s become more of a philosopher, looking for the common elements in our paths through life, whether from science, spirituality or nature. He finds a common desire for happiness, found by being more aware and more alive in each moment. And moving beyond the realm of words and beliefs to connect in the realm of being and love. Life seems to come down to relationships.

Let’s wake up and love one another!