“I care.” “I’m here.” “You can.” Simple words can ________ a lot. Perhaps the two most ________ words in the English language: You matter. Far too many people don’t believe this is ________. Especially since the start of the COVID-19, many people have felt sad, lonely and even hopeless, ________ if they’ll ever feel connected and valuable again.

My friend Cheryl Rice ________ the You Matter Marathon for this reason. It began in 2016 ________ someone handed her a business card with only two words on it—You Matter. Those two words touched Cheryl ________. She wanted to pay it forward, so she ordered her own You Matter cards and began ________ them with others.

One day, she was standing ________ a woman in the supermarket checkout line. The cashier asked the woman how she was doing. Instead of ________ “I’m fine,” she said that her husband just lost his job, and she didn’t know how to get along with her son.

Cheryl wished she could help. She knew she couldn’t solve her problems or ________ her pain, but she could give her one of the most powerful gifts anyone can receive from another human being—a moment of comfort. So she met the woman outside and ________ her a You Matter card. The woman began to cry and said, “You have no ________ how much this means to me.”

When we reach outside ourselves and make a close connection with someone who’s hurting, ________ who just wants to be seen and valued as a human being, in that moment, we matter. We make a ________ and we encourage someone else to do the same, one good thing at a time.

The cartoons of a penguin interested in football and the funny side of pandemic life won the Kids News Cartoon Contest. Young cartoonists Mia Lai,10 and Zoe Neal, 13, packed fun and powerful messages into their drawings, impressing the experts of News Corp Australia.

Mia, from Sydney, was the winner in the Year 3~4 group with her cartoon about a penguin that made headlines when it swam 3,000 kilometres from Antarctica to New Zealand. “I was going to make him go there for fish and French Fries but I thought it would be funnier if he was at a football match because the sport is very popular. I googled and found out there was a match with France about the time when he was there.”

Zoe, from Melbourne, was the winner of Year 7~8 group, focused on COVID-19 with her cartoon named Travelling during the Pandemic. She said her cartoon pointed out that while people were unable to do much travelling during the pandemic, the virus was happily making their way around the world.

Zoe, who loves to draw and hopes for a job in cartoons, said she was very surprised and very happy to be a winner in the Kids News Cartoon Contest.

Four News Corp Australia’s big-name cartoonists picked the winners from more than 200 cartoons. The winners will receive a cartoon of themselves drawn by one of the expert cartoonists.

Do you always feel lonely? When do you feel lonely? Is loneliness a good feeling? Nowadays more and more people are having this kind of feeling in their daily life. When someone feels lonely, he or she will have an experience of being alone because of low levels of social contact* and relationships*.

There are two kinds of loneliness: emotional* loneliness and social loneliness. Emotional loneliness is about the relationship between parents and their children. When children leave their parents for a while, they usually show the pain, such as crying and trying to search for their parents. Therefore, emotional loneliness is caused by leaving a person that someone is close to, such as a parent. On the other hand, social loneliness is the loneliness that one experiences when he or she leaves a wide social network*. One doesn’t feel that he or she is a member of a group, or one doesn’t have friends to talk to when he or she is sad.

Besides, loneliness is different from being alone. Being alone is about not having contact with people. But loneliness is a subjective experience: if people think they are lonely, then they are lonely. People can be lonely when they are alone, or in a group. What makes people lonely is the fact that they want more social interaction*. People can be in a group and feel lonely because they don’t get to talk to enough people. On the other hand, one can be alone and not feel lonely, though there is no one around him or her. That person is not lonely because maybe he or she doesn’t want to have social interaction* at that time.

So, what about you? Will you feel lonely if you stay alone? Or you just enjoy the time being with yourself.