Like Hearted
The algorithm says we’re like-minded—but I want to offer something deeper: a story that quiets the noise long enough for you to breathe.
Picture the Lakers game at Crypto.com Arena—20,000 people. Now imagine that venue multiplied until you reach a million faces.
That’s roughly how many children are born with congenital heart defects each year around the world. Some are born where early detection and corrective surgery are normal. Others are born where air-raid sirens are background music and survival is the local religion.
Dr. Bill Novick is a pediatric cardiac surgeon who flies into those places for one reason: to operate on children who otherwise won’t live.
My cousin, Christopher Dela Cruz—writer and director of the documentary Tiny Hearts—put his camera over an infant’s open sternum and watched a tiny heart beat in real time. Dr. Novick warned him: “If you fall, fall backwards.”
Chris told me he heard sirens outside. In those places, the siren doesn’t mean fear is optional. It means the bombs are already in the air.
And through the mask, Novick said something like a prayer: People will die. But the most important soul is this one on the table.
When the surgery works and the child is placed back into the parents’ arms, you see a kind of joy that has nothing to do with payday or comfort. It’s the joy of time being returned. Life continues.
Watching Chris’s work gave me a reset. My problems didn’t vanish—but they got put back into proportion.
Chris’s book Like Hearted is already out, and supporting it supports the years he spent bringing this story into the light.
And if you’re reading this while carrying your own worry—pause for a second. Somewhere, a child in a war-torn country needs heart surgery.
You can’t save them from where you’re sitting. But you can do one thing: remember they exist—and let your heart practice being bigger than your world.
We share that care.
We’re like-hearted.