The Uber Driver

...and the 4.32 miles that changed everything.

“What the hell am I doing?”

It wasn’t the first time this thought had crossed my mind in the last 68 days, but it had never been louder or more persistent than today. I had arrived in Washington, DC, a few days earlier with a fever and on the brink of exhaustion. The mission was already taking a toll on me, and I still had 44 states to cover.

Before my arrival, my generous host emailed her community, asking her neighbors to share their stories. She explained that she would have a visitor traveling to all 50 states to compile stories of human kindness, and any story, no matter how small, was welcome.

Crickets.

Over 120 people in her neighborhood received the request, yet not one person replied with anything to share. Should I just give up now? Maybe I should change the title of my journey from “more good” to “a little good” or “kind of good”? I could call it a day, drive back home, climb into my own bed, and return to the comfort of normal life. It was tempting.

Good stories existed, but they were difficult to find. Everyone was in their own bubble, busy and stressed. The holiday season had just ended, and we faced a looming inauguration that threatened to further divide the country.

But I kept ruminating on how it had been 68 days – what did I have to show for it? This mission I embarked on in honor of my late mother may very well have been in vain. Demoralized doesn’t even begin to describe how I felt.

I checked my email the day before I was supposed to leave town, just as I had been doing religiously, hoping that stories would come flowing in. Nothing. Just as I was about to slam my laptop screen down in frustration… PING! A message from a young woman named Karin arrived, telling me she was in the AmeriCorps. She wanted to meet up to chat, but I couldn’t tell by her email if she had a specific story to tell.

Up to that point, I had met anyone, anywhere. I drove to people’s workplaces, homes, and local coffee shops. Once, I drove across the entire state of South Carolina just to get a story and then drove back to where I was staying that night. There was no one I wouldn’t meet, and there was no story I wouldn’t hear. At the very least, I figured people appreciated being listened to, so even if the story wouldn’t end up in my book, I could provide “more good” by giving them my time.

But I was leaving tomorrow, and as I sat at my computer and sipped a ginger ale to calm the pit in my stomach, I wasn’t feeling very motivated to do anything but get out of D.C. To make matters worse, it was pouring rain when I woke up the next morning. I started convincing myself that I was scheduled to leave that day and should pack and get going. Did Karin even have a story, or did she just want to meet and chat?

But then that nagging voice in the back of my head (the one that convinced me to attempt this trip in the first place) insisted: how will you know if you don’t go? As drained and defeated as I felt, I couldn’t help but cling to that little thread of hope that this woman might have something for me.

Karin worked downtown, so we planned to meet at a coffee shop near McPherson Square. By then, the rain was pouring down heavily, and it was close to rush hour. I tried not to view this as a sign to cancel our meeting and instead decided to order an Uber.

A few minutes later, a black Nissan Altima arrived. I quickly closed my umbrella and jumped into the back seat to avoid the downpour outside. The driver greeted me with a friendly hello, and I politely smiled and responded in kind. Then, I rested my head against the cold glass and closed my eyes.

The Uber driver interrupted my silent anxiety attack to ask me how long I had lived in D.C. I mumbled that I didn’t live here, but my lackluster response didn’t deter him. “Oh? Where are you visiting from?” he asked in an accent I couldn’t yet decipher. “New York,” I replied, offering no further detail again, hoping to derail what felt like a conversation on the verge of starting. “How long did it take you to get here, you fly?”

I lifted my head from the glass and sat back in defeat. I was raised always to be polite and considerate, so despite my best attempts to ignore the conversation, I engaged.

“It took me two months.”

I watched the confusion flicker across his face in the rear-view mirror. I took a deep breath before launching into my explanation. “I’m stopping in every state along the way, collecting stories of acts of human kindness to create a book for hospitals,” I shared. I waited for the perfunctory “wow, cool” response and hoped we could return to our mutually agreed-upon quietude. Instead, he immediately turned around and smiled at me. “I have a story for you!”

I figured he would tell me something short and sweet about someone who had been kind to him during his Uber ride. If I was lucky, I could still enjoy a few minutes of solitude before the ride ended. Instead, he told me this:

“I came here 20 years ago from Sierra Leone,” he began. “I came with a friend. I had a place to stay, but my friend’s place didn’t work out. He ended up in a shelter. My friend had been a doctor back in our country. But he didn’t have the proper qualifications here, so instead, he got a job doing a newspaper route. Every morning, he would get up and throw newspapers on the lawns of wealthy businessmen. One morning, he was throwing the paper, and it hit a light fixture, breaking it. Now, mind you, it was early in the morning, and no one was around. He could have left, and the homeowner would never know what happened, but instead, my friend went and got a pencil. He left a note on the man’s door and told him he’d come back to pay later. When my friend returned later, the homeowner was just returning from a business trip. He had seen the note and invited my friend in for coffee. They talked for a while. The businessman asked about my friend and found out his story, how he had traveled here and couldn’t be the doctor he wanted to be and was living in a shelter. Long story short, the man ended up putting my friend in a studio and paying for him to attend medical school. My friend is a doctor now in D.C.”

I sat in the backseat in stunned silence at what he had just told me. It wasn’t just that it was a huge story of kindness; it was that it had come out of nowhere.

It reminded me why I was even here in the first place, in this Uber with this stranger. It reminded me of my mission and that, despite the struggle- and boy, had it been one lately- there was still good out there, and it would find you if you let it.

My driver continued, “You know, it’s because he did the right thing. He didn’t have to leave a note. It was dark outside, and there were no security cameras. He could have walked away, but he didn’t. He did the right thing and followed his heart.” We were almost at the coffee shop when he began to slow down and pull over. He put the car in park and turned around to look at me. “It’s just like what you’re doing, too,” he explained. “The most important work you’ll ever do is the work you do with your heart.”

Tears began to roll down my cheeks as he turned back one last time. “Well, have a nice day!” he shouted to me as I thanked him and slowly got out of his car into the pouring rain. While everyone around me dashed to get inside, there I stood in McPherson Square.

4.32 miles. That was the distance we traveled together that day in his car. When I completed my 50-state journey almost three years later, I had covered over 43,000 miles. But those 4.32 miles with my driver that day were the most significant. They reminded me why I was here and what I needed to do. Although Karin didn’t have a specific story for me, I wouldn’t have gotten in the Uber without her email. I wouldn’t have spent those 4.32 miles with my driver. And those miles wouldn’t have given me the exact push I needed at a moment when I felt I might give up and forget the whole ridiculous thing.

I realized that these moments would occur again and again if I continued to say yes to anyone and everyone who wanted to meet. My driver taught me the most important lesson of my mission in those few short miles.

The most important work you will ever do is the work you do with your heart.

Reflecting on that 68th day, I had wondered, “What the hell am I doing?” It was also the day that question was answered—an answer my mom already knew. Although there will be tragedies and terrible events in our lives, there will always be more good—if we continue to look for it.

So, I kept looking.

And I found it.