Happy Soul Food Friday!
Love this “permission slip”…
This week:
“The only way to save yourself from the darkness is to light a candle for someone else!”
What you may not know when you read on is Billy is what my school friends in India called me (short for Billimoria) before we moved to the States. My Parsi name (Parsis are the Zoroastrians of India that migrated from Persia hundreds of years ago) is Navroz, and I was born just 9 days after Navroz or Nowruz. That said,
Nowuz is timed not to a fixed date, but to an astronomical event…
Enjoy a little bit about each of these events and traditions, along with a soulful story to follow that should lift your spirits!
BTW, if you are local-
Friday March 20th is the last day to nominate your volunteer for NCPC VAC.
Please consider nominating an amazing volunteer that invests their time and talent to make our community better and see you on April 10th at the Rancho Bernardo Inn from 2 to 5:30 with our live band Strange Crew playing after the ceremony!
Volunteer Awards Celebration – North County Philanthropy Council
The Spring Equinox from Billy S:
Aloha Friends,
The Spring Equinox is on Friday, March 20, 2026, at 7:46 am PDT
This moment begins the spring season in the Northern Hemisphere.
Translated literally, equinox means “equal night”. On the equinox, the length of day and night is nearly equal in all parts of the world. Twelve hours of each, because the sun is positioned above the equator.
It is also known as the vernal equinox, “vernal” means fresh or new, and is from the Latin word for spring, which is “ver.”
On this day the sun rises precisely due east and sets due west.
The Spring Equinox signifies a rebirth. The duration of light is about to overtake the darkness.
After the Spring Equinox, the days become longer and the air warmer.
The soil becomes fertile and all hibernating life is re-animated. It is a time to plant seeds of growth.
The Spring Equinox is a time of renewal – in nature, the home, and in us. More than just physical activity, “spring cleaning” removes any negative energy accumulated over the dark winter months and resonates with the positive growing energy of spring and summer.
The Spring Equinox is a time where there is a special quality of energy – to plant, grow and renew our lives. Energy is emerging from the ground where it has been dormant in the earth since the Winter Solstice.
Wishing you a special day, symbolic of balance in our life and with the environment.
Stay in tune with nature and wellness,
Billy
Nowruz 2026: Persian New Year Dates and Meanings:
300 million people around the world celebrate this tradition.
Nowruz 2026: Persian New Year Dates and Meanings Explained – Newsweek
And finally, the heartwarming soul-filled story I promised to warm your heart and stir your soul:
The entire line was furious at my 89-year-old father for stalling the bank queue—until he made the teller weep.
The groan from the guy behind us was audible. It was a heavy, “it’s Friday afternoon and I just want my paycheck” kind of groan.
My dad, Frank, didn’t seem to hear it. Or maybe he just didn’t care.
He stood at the counter of the credit union, leaning heavily on his cane, while the line snaked all the way back to the vestibule. People were checking their watches. A woman in scrubs was tapping her foot so hard I could feel the vibration through the floor.
I was mortified. “Dad,” I whispered, leaning in. “Please. Let’s just use the ATM next time.”
He ignored me. He was focused entirely on the young woman behind the glass. Her name tag said “JASMINE.” She looked like she had been crying on her break. Her eyes were red-rimmed, and she moved with the heavy, robotic exhaustion of someone working a double shift.
“I need to withdraw $100,” Dad said, his voice gravelly but loud. “And I need it all in five-dollar bills.”
Jasmine blinked, her customer-service smile faltering. “All in fives, sir?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
I felt the collective blood pressure of the room spike. The guy behind me muttered something about “wasting everyone’s time.”
Jasmine sighed, opened her drawer, and counted out twenty bills. She slid the stack under the glass. “Here you go, sir.”
“Thank you,” Dad said.
And then, he started counting them back to her.
One. By. One.
“Dad!” I hissed. “Come on!”
“One moment,” he said calmly. “Five… ten… fifteen…”
He counted all the way to one hundred. The tension in the room was thick enough to choke on. When he finished, he paused. His hand, shaking slightly with a tremor he usually tries to hide, slid two of the bills back toward her.
“This one,” he said, tapping the first Lincoln, “is for you. Go to that coffee place next door when you get off. Get one of those frozen drinks with the whipped cream. The ones that cost too much.”
Jasmine froze.
“And this one,” he tapped the second bill, “is for the security guard by the door. He’s been standing there for four hours and hasn’t shifted his weight once. That takes discipline.”
“Sir, I can’t take a tip,” Jasmine stammered.
“It’s not a tip,” Dad said, looking her dead in the eye. “It’s a prescription. You look like the weight of the world is sitting on your shoulders, young lady. For five minutes, I want you to put it down and just eat the whipped cream.”
That’s when she broke.
It wasn’t a graceful single tear. Her face crumpled. She covered her mouth with her hand, her shoulders shaking, and let out a sob that silenced the entire lobby.
The angry guy behind me stopped checking his watch. The woman in scrubs stopped tapping her foot. The room went dead silent.
“Thank you,” she whispered, her voice cracking. “I… I really needed that today.”
Dad just tipped his VFW cap at her. “We all do, kid.”
When we got back to my minivan, I didn’t start the engine right away. I looked at him. He was staring out the window at the strip mall parking lot, looking smaller than usual.
“You held up the whole bank,” I said softly. “Just to give away ten bucks.”
He didn’t look at me. “It was selfish.”
I laughed. “Selfish? Dad, you made that girl cry happy tears. That’s the opposite of selfish.”
He turned to me then, and his eyes were wet.
“You don’t understand,” he said. “I sit in that house all day. I turn on the TV, and it’s just people screaming. They scream about politics. They scream about the economy. They tell me my neighbor is my enemy. They tell me I should be scared to leave my front door.”
He gripped the door handle with his spotted, papery hands.
“I feel invisible,” he whispered. “I’m just an old man that the world has moved past. I can’t fix the economy. I can’t stop the wars on the news. I can’t even drive myself to the store anymore.”
He took a shaky breath.
“So, I act selfish. I force a moment of connection. I buy a coffee for a sad girl because for those thirty seconds, I’m not just a statistic. I’m not just a burden. I’m a human being affecting another human being. I made the world stop spinning for a minute, and I made it a little bit softer.”
He looked down at his lap. “I do it because it makes me feel less lonely. It proves I’m still here.”
I drove home in silence, tears stinging my own eyes.
When we pulled into his driveway, I grabbed the bags of groceries from the back. “I got you that frozen lasagna you like,” I said.
“Good,” he said, taking the box. He immediately turned and started walking across the lawn toward the neighbor’s house.
“Dad? Where are you going?”
“To the Millers’,” he called back. “Mike lost his job at the plant last week. I saw him sitting on his porch steps with his head in his hands this morning. They have three growing boys to feed.”
“Dad, that’s my dinner for you!”
He stopped and looked back, a mischievous glint returning to his eye. “I know. But giving it to them makes me feel like a provider again. It makes me feel useful.”
He winked. “Like I said. I’m a very selfish man.”
I watched him walk away, his cane tapping against the pavement.
We live in a world that is constantly trying to isolate us. It tells us to fear each other, to hoard what we have, to look out for Number One.
But my father taught me something today.
Sometimes, the only way to save yourself from the darkness is to light a candle for someone else. Even if it costs you your dinner. Even if it costs you ten dollars and a few angry glares in a bank line.
If that’s being selfish, I think we could all afford to be a little more selfish.
Please light a candle for someone else this week and enjoy these events of astronomical proportion!
Love,
Neville
Linked-In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nevillebillimoria
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nbillimoria
“Even after all this time
the sun never says to the earth,
“You owe me.”
Look what happens with a love like that
It lights the whole world.”–Hafiz
Happy Soul Food Friday! 