To the editor:

I grew up in Chateaugay. Like a lot of people from small places, I left for work, for opportunity, for the wider world–and I told myself I’d “come back someday” without really knowing what that meant.

On Christmas Eve, I returned to visit my mother here in Tupper Lake after a 5-year absence. And the funny thing is: coming back hasn’t been about nostalgia. It’s been about noticing what I miss when life gets too fast — simple connection, real conversation, and the feeling that the people around you aren’t just consuming the same news and noise, but actually sharing perspective.

That’s what led me to build an app called Pass the Candle.

The simplest way to describe it is: Wordle, but for reflection. Each day, the app offers a short quote or passage. You pick a stance — agree, disagree, tension, incomplete — and add a short reflection. Then comes the part that makes it more than journaling: you can share your reflection with someone, and they add theirs to unlock yours. It’s a tiny ritual designed to create connection instead of commentary.

Why build this at all?

Because I realized something in my own life: I had plenty of “tools” (books, articles, self-help quotes, spiritual readings), but not enough shared reflection. People I love would send me something meaningful … and then we’d move on. No exchange. No curiosity. No sense-making together.

So I built Pass the Candle as a low-friction way to change that.

It’s intentionally simple: It’s designed to take a minute or two. It encourages thoughtful, non-performative sharing. It’s a daily habit, not an endless feed. This past weekend, more than 400 reflections were shared inside the app. That might not sound like much in the world of viral social media, but to me it’s the whole point: hundreds of small moments where one person offered a thought, and another person met them there.

In a time when “connection” often means broadcasting opinions into the void, I wanted to build something quieter — something that feels more like passing a light across a kitchen table.

I’m sharing this here because I’m proud to have grown up around the Adirondacks, and proud to be building again with that sensibility in mind: practical, human, and built for real life.

If you’d like to try Pass the Candle, you can find it here: Passthecandle.app and if it resonates, pass it to one person and see what comes back.

Eric Bomyea

Tupper Lake