August 2019
The average human life lasts 650,000 hours. How will you spend yours?
Mary Latham has devoted three years to a 50-state, kindness-seeking quest.
Finding Power in Small Acts of Kindness
Two weeks ago, I interviewed Mary Latham, a wedding photographer turned road-tripping humanitarian, for my “Everyday Heroes” column in The Saturday Evening Post. Since 2016, Mary has driven her late mom’s Subaru across America, collecting stories of kindness. Her goal is to visit all 50 states, and when I met her in Crofton, Maryland, she had six more to go (Mary has driven 38,000+ miles, so I did not bitch about my one-hour drive from Virginia). My profile will run in 2020, but I want to share one of Mary’s recent encounters.
A few days before our interview, she had met Heather White Guillen, the founder of Sheryl’s Heart Foundation, which helps provide pharmaceutical and medical care to children and adults with cancer. Heather was born in El Paso, Texas, and when Mary texted her about meeting, she was at her home in Maryland, crying, watching news coverage of the shooting that killed 22 people. “I met her at a coffee shop,” Mary told me. “She comes running out to my car and she’s crying and she’s hugging me, and she’s like, ‘I’ve just been so broken and sad, because I’m watching this about my hometown, and I’m not there. And I feel like I’m not doing anything. I just felt so hopeless. And then you reached out to me.’”
And then you reached out to me. Sometimes that’s all it takes.
The call reminded Heather that she was a positive presence in the world, and for Mary, that affirmation, that reminder that kindness is everywhere, is why she’s collecting these stories (which will appear in a book she’s creating for hospital waiting rooms). Even if you do something small—helping a neighbor, smiling at a stranger, buying someone a cup of coffee—you’re creating good. As I wrote in my recent piece for National Geographic Traveler, there is power in small gestures, and small gestures, taken together, become large gestures. Mary has seen that in her travels. The challenge, for all of us, is not allowing the world’s cruelty to overshadow the far-more-prevalent good. In El Paso, that includes the thousands of strangers who lined up for a victim’s funeral after her husband worried that no one would attend. Or the 11-year-old boy who started the El Paso Challenge to encourage acts of kindness.
As she’s traveled, Mary’s host families have included liberals and conservatives, atheists and the devout, and she’s found that despite our divisions, kindness is thriving. It just doesn’t get much publicity. So don’t succumb to cynicism in the face of hate, or as Mary puts it, “Do not stop being a good person because of bad people.” —Ken Budd
See The World
Porto, Portugal
Whether you’re in Bali or your own backyard, here’s how to find meaning from travel: Check out Elise Hu’s interview with Jenny Odell, author of How to Do Nothing, for NPR.
Traveling without a smartphone? It sounds scary, but it can reduce anxiety, boost happiness, and increase encounters with locals, a recent study found (from TheConversation.com).
Plus: The best road trips for 2019 (from TripSavvy.com), eight places to do volunteer trail work (Megan Michelson for Outside), and my list of eight short but incredibly scenic train rides for AARP.
Live Your Best Life
Shasta, California
Why couples should trade date nights for hiking, biking, or being outdoors (Julie Compton for NBC News).
Want to feel happier? Talk to a stranger. Honest. New research shows it’s a mood booster (Betsy Mikel for Inc.).
Plus: Simple steps for revealing your life’s purpose (Regan Hillyer for Forbes), three types of people who can affect your happiness (and why “we can catch negative emotions like we catch a cold”—Emma Mehrabanpour for Thrive Global), and how to really notice the world around you (Tim Herrera for The New York Times).
Meet Amazing People
When chess champ Orrin Hudson (left) read about a senseless shooting hundreds of miles from his Georgia home, he radically changed his life. Here’s how Hudson fights violence by teaching kids chess in my new “Everyday Heroes” profile.
I was moved by this segment on NPR’s 1A with Jayson Greene, whose two-year-old daughter was killed in a freak accident. Here’s an excerpt from his book, Once More We Saw Stars.
Plus: At age 101, a D.C. woman has published her first collection of poems (Tara Bahrampour for The Washington Post), retired chef Eman Saber uses his cooking skills as a volunteer (Farida Jhabvala Romero for Marketplace), and 30-year-old Amanda Clark and her husband have found purpose by caring for abused or abandoned animals (Mike Argento for the York Daily Record).
Photo of the Month
On August 2, I spoke to 600+ college students in Baltimore about my journey as a global volunteer. Of all the photos I show, this image from the West Bank (Bethlehem, to be exact) always gets the best response. I deeply regret not buying a t-shirt.