You may remember Peter Aguero’s Moth story of how the simple suggestion of taking a pottery class altered his outlook on life. Different circumstances in this case, but Muneesh Jain’s Moth story told in Traverse City also happens to hinge on a moment in time that revised the trajectory his life was on.
But there’s always a backstory to such moments, and Muneesh talks about his parent’s expectations that he could never meet, no matter how hard he tried.
My parents are from India. So, in our house, that meant we had a high bar set for academic achievement, and a specific type of professional success: doctor, lawyer, engineer.
And he did try, to the point that his heath was at risk. But walking away from success resulted in his disconnecting from his family, as well as society itself. Rather than a short brief, Muneesh was out of sorts for five full years.
The delivery guy would just leave the food outside my apartment because I couldn’t even make eye contact with him. I was a failure.
And then… Something unexpected happens. Something that reignites is passion, and a lifelong dream. The journey he embarks upon connects him to new people in ways he couldn’t predict, and the process seems to resurrect him. (no spoilers here — you’ll have to hear his story to learn the details of his journey)
As these articles are fueled by java, you can always…
And I realized we weren’t really even talking about baseball anymore. We were talking about family connection.
While staying with friends in Seattle, a scene unfolds we can’t possibly expect.
The next day, I hear a knock at the door. Nobody’s home, so I walk upstairs and through the glass door, I see the silhouette of a 4 foot 10, 90 pound little woman. I open the door and just say, “What are you doing here, Mother?”
As the saying goes, “It’s never too late.” For Muneesh, the subtext is that it wasn’t too late to reconnect to his mother, and in doing so, come to understand her in a way that wasn’t possible while growing up.
Transcript
My parents are from India. So, in our house, that meant we had a high bar set for academic achievement, and a specific type of professional success: doctor, lawyer, engineer. By the time my sister was 12, she knew she was going to be a doctor, just like my dad.
When I was nine, I called a family meeting to let everyone know I was never going to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or an engineer. I was going to be a gymnast. My parents, they tolerated it, but told me that one day I was going to have to grow out of it. But I went to the gym six days a week, five hours a night. And by the time I was a teenager, I was training for the Olympics. Then multiple injuries ended my career. My folks, they said, “Alright, you got that out of your system. Now it’s time to focus on your education.”
I needed them to be impressed with me, the way they were my sister. I just, I couldn’t wrap my head around doing it their way. So I came up with a bigger idea. When I was 19, I got a job with ESPN. I was producing live segments for Sportscenter, ESPN news, hanging out with my sports idols. My folks, they kept reminding me, “Don’t let this get in the way of your schoolwork.”
Alright, fine. If that wasn’t good enough, I came up with a bigger idea. I left the network and moved to Detroit, Michigan, a city that I love, and I started a sports magazine. I sold ads, I found distributors, I built a staff with grown-ass people who had kids older than me. And we were killing it. We were up to 50,000 subscribers. People were recognizing me on the street. Hell, Muhammad Ali said he liked my magazine.
But every time I’d see my parents, they’d just ask me, “When are you going back to college? Get that degree.”
This time, there was no bigger idea. I had to make this work. I doubled down, worked twice as hard, which also meant that I pretty much stopped sleeping entirely and started drinking and drugging the nights away to manage my stress levels. And when I was 24, my doctor told me that I was six months away from a heart attack.
I either had to get rid of the magazine or die. So I gave up. And something broke inside of me. And I couldn’t face my parents. I took the money I’d saved from ESPN and the magazine, and I ran away. I moved to New York into a tiny 160-square-foot studio apartment where the windows didn’t even open, and it was there that my self-imposed exile began. Slowly losing contact with every human I’d ever met.
The delivery guy would just leave the food outside my apartment because I couldn’t even make eye contact with him. I was a failure.
My parents would call and I never knew what to say. My dad would lecture me that I wasn’t even a part of the family anymore. My mom would yell at me that I needed to get my life together. And every conversation just ended in tears. So I stopped answering their calls. Then they started sending me money to keep me alive, and I took it, and that made me hate myself so much more. And so I just stopped leaving my apartment entirely.
The TV would be on 24 hours a day. I wasn’t watching at all. I just needed flashing images and noise to block out the constant stream of shame, regret, self-loathing that was clanging around the inside of my skull.
And that became my life. Every day, all day, living in near isolation for five years.
One day, a baseball game just happened to be on. Now, I hadn’t watched a sporting event of any kind since the death of my magazine. It was always just too hard. But on this day, I was so broken, I just stared motionlessly at the screen in front of me. And within a couple of innings, something strange was happening. I felt myself sitting up in my bed, engaging with something outside of my own head. I was smiling. I mean, actually smiling, for the first time in five years.
By the time the game ended, I’d already ordered the MLB TV package and just started mainlining baseball. I was watching every game, reading every article, going back over the last five years to see everything that I’d missed. And in the middle of it all, I remembered a dream I had when I was six.
You know, “One day, I’m gonna see a baseball game at all 30 MLB stadiums.” It’s one of those silly things that a lot of baseball fans want to do, but few actually get a chance to do it. And the ones who do it, do it over the course of a lifetime, like a normal human person.
But in this moment, nobody even knew that I existed. I could disappear off the planet and no one would notice. So I said, “Screw it. I’m going to do it. And I’m gonna do it in one season.” I’m going to drive 17,000 miles in 95 days and go to a baseball game at all 30 ballparks. I started obsessively poring over maps and schedules, planning out my route.
Every time I’d go down to the bodega to buy another pack of cigarettes, instead, I would take that money out of the ATM, go back up to my apartment, shove it underneath my mattress. By the time the next baseball season came around, I’d saved $6,000 and quit smoking.
I was ready to go. I called my parents to let them know what I was doing, and they really didn’t know what to say. They were just happy that I was alive. And I hit the road. Every 48 hours I was in a new city. But I didn’t want to just sit in the ballpark alone. I needed a way to reintegrate myself into society. The problem was, I had completely forgotten how to even have a conversation with somebody else.
So I invented a podcast. I couldn’t have cared less if anybody actually listened to this thing. I just needed an excuse to go talk to strangers. And it was working. People were talking to me about the stats of their favorite ball players, the histories of their ballparks. One kid at Citi Field at a Mets game spent 20 minutes meticulously breaking down why it was that the Yankees sucked.
And I bounced from ballpark to ballpark. I noticed that my conversations, they were evolving. I talked to a father and son in Baltimore, where after our official interview, the father pulled me aside to quietly confide in me that he didn’t really have a relationship with his eldest son, but his youngest, his youngest loved baseball, so he knew that at least they’d be able to talk about that.
I talked to a mother and daughter in San Francisco who had been going to games together for 20 years. Three generations of women in Texas. The grandmother proudly shoving Little Laney, her nine-year-old granddaughter, in front of my microphone, saying, “Little Laney, tell the nice man what you do all your school reports on.” And Little Laney excitedly screams out, “The Texas Rangers!”
And I realized we weren’t really even talking about baseball anymore. We were talking about family connection.
By the time I got to LA, I’d already driven 8,000 miles on my own. I was halfway done with my tour. But this was my hell week, because the Angels and the Dodgers rarely play at home at the same time. I had to catch a game in Anaheim, drive 17 hours up to Seattle, turn back around, drive 17 hours back to LA, then 30 hours to Minnesota. That’s 4,000 miles in 10 days. But I was a man possessed, nothing was going to stop me.
After my Angels game, I hopped in the car and headed up north. But about halfway into the drive, my vision starts to get blurry and my body starts to uncontrollably shake. I pull over just in time to open the door and projectile vomit all over the side of the highway. I didn’t know what to do, so I called my dad. He just sighed into the phone and said, “You have food poisoning.” What am I supposed to do from here? “Gatorade and Pepto Bismol.”
My mom gets on the phone and starts screaming at me. This is ridiculous. You need to take better care of yourself and I hung up. I wasn’t in the mood for another lecture. I made it to Seattle in time for my game by double fisting Gatorade and Pepto Bismol. I was staying with some family friends so I knew they’d be able to take care of me.
The next day, I hear a knock at the door. Nobody’s home, so I walk upstairs and through the glass door, I see the silhouette of a 4 foot 10, 90 pound little woman. I open the door and just say, “What are you doing here, Mother?”
And she says, “I’m here to help you drive.” Now, she must have seen the panic on my face, because she followed that up with, “And I’ve been listening to your podcast. I know you don’t take bathroom or food breaks when you’re on the road, so I’m not going to take any breaks either. We’re going to stay on your schedule.” I didn’t know she was listening to the podcast.
And then she said one more thing. “I’m driving the whole way, so you’ve got two options. You sit next to me and you can sleep or we can talk.” Now, I honestly can’t remember the last time my mom and I had been in the same room together without it devolving into tears. So I said, “Okay, Mama.” I got in the car and I immediately went to sleep.
I slept the entire way to LA and when we got there, she said, “I’m not going to go to the baseball game with you.” I said, “Why not?” She said, “Because you’ve got work to do. And if people see you there with your mother, they’re not going to want to talk to you.” I said, “You’re being ridiculous, of course you’re going to come,” and I got her a ticket.
We’re at Dodger Stadium and I start interviewing the gentleman sitting next to me as I’d done at every ballpark before. My mom, she moves to the seat behind us to give us some space to chat. And after the interview is over, I can hear her talking to her new seatmate. And her new seatmate’s asking, “Wow, you must be a huge baseball fan to do this type of road trip.” And my mom just answers, “No. I really don’t like baseball. I like watching my son watch baseball.” I pretended like I didn’t hear that.
After the game was over, we’re walking back to the car and she stops me. She wants to show me a picture she had taken during the game. And I looked down on her phone and it’s actually, it’s a picture of me and the guy that I had been interviewing. And she just says, “Look. You’re smiling.”
I said, “When are you going home, Mama?” And she said, “No, no, no, no. I’m going to drive with you to Minnesota too.” This time, there was no panic on my face. I said, “Okay, we’re going to split the drive and let’s talk.”
As we made our way out east, I started talking to my mom the way that I had been talking to these strangers at the ballpark these last couple of months, asking her stories about her life. You know, this woman, she survived three wars between India and Pakistan. I didn’t know that.
She told me the story of how her and my dad’s arranged marriage came to be. I knew they were arranged, I just never knew how or why it happened. I don’t know why I never bothered to ask her that.
Right before we got to Minnesota, we made a quick pit stop in South Dakota at Mount Rushmore. And as we’re walking up to the monument, my mom peeled off to call my dad and I was eavesdropping and I could hear her say, “As immigrants to this country, we’d always wanted to see Mount Rushmore. We just never found a reason to make the trip. This is all so exciting. I can’t wait for you to be able to see… our son… is just so happy.”
Thank you.
Back to you…
As unique as the details of Muneesh’s story are, the themes are all too common. Expectations. Failure. Shame. And also being open to those times when a simple circumstance serves as inspiration to reclaim the life that’s been waiting for you. Yes, the first few steps require initiative, but success manifests when others are influential elements in your narrative.
If you have a story to tell of getting lost, then finding yourself, don’t forget the cast of characters that accompanied you on the road to recovery. With them, you would still be lost.
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Billions of Personal Stories as Told on the Golden Gate Bridge
/in Architecture, History, Society, Statistics, Transportation/by Mark LovettIt was 88 years ago, on May 27, 1937 that the Golden Gate Bridge opened, finally making a direct connection (not using a circuitous route) between San Francisco and Marin County, California that did not involve a ferry. Only pedestrian traffic crossed the bridge that day, with vehicles permitted to make the journey the following day.
It’s just one out of the millions of bridges that exist throughout the world, and in one respect its function is basically the same as virtually all the others — getting people from one side to the other — but the unique combination of its location and architecture have made it iconic. A visual recognized the world over.
While bridges evoke the idea of transportation, I think of bridges as storytellers, or to be more precise, story conduits. So how many stories has the Golden Gate Bridge facilitated? That’s hard to say, precisely, but based on numbers I dug up, the total seems to be well over 2 billion. More likely than not beyond 3 billion.
Stories of people coming and going to work. Families on vacation. Those making trips of all sorts; south towards Mexico, and north towards Canada. Both saints and sinners, as well as everything in between. While they’re just physical objects, bridges facilitate a fundamental desire to reach beyond ourselves.
For example, when the ancient Romans built the Pons Sublicius across the Tiber River around 642 BC, they weren’t just connecting 2 banks of earth — they were helping create the destiny of their civilization. Every Roman legion that marched across their bridges carried the seeds of an empire that would shape Western culture for millennia — for better or worse.
In more recent times, but still predating the Golden Gate Bridge, consider how different New York City would be today if the Brooklyn Bridge had never been built. When it opened in 1883, it didn’t just span the East River; it transformed New York from a collection of separate boroughs into the unified city we know today.
Consider the Tower Bridge in London. Completed in 1894, it connected not just the north and south banks of the River Thames, but also the old world with the new industrial age. Imagine the conversations that took place as horse-drawn carriages shared those roadways with new motor cars — generations literally passing each other on a bridge between eras.
When we understand bridges as more than infrastructure, but as the connective tissue of human experience, we begin to appreciate how they’ve shaped not just where we can go, but who we become in the crossing.
Back to you…
Maybe your story involves crossing a physical bridge, as you moved from one place to another, or it may be more metaphorical in nature as you progressed in your career or in a relationship. Think about the starting and ending points, with a chasm in-between, and what changed when you crossed over.
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The House Un-American Activities Committee: The Day Freedom of Expression Became a Crime
/in Democracy, Discrimination, Freedom, Government, History/by Mark LovettThroughout history, personal stories have been adversely affected by the acts of unjust and misguided governments. Such unjust actions are often justified for a variety of reasons, including an individual’s ethnicity, culture, gender, religion or political beliefs. This last item — political beliefs — sparked a decision that had far-reaching effects on the fabric of American society.
The date is May 26, 1938. The United States remains in a fragile state as a result of the Great Depression as its citizens watch with growing unease storm clouds gathering across Europe and Asia. But on this spring day in 1938, a war of a very different sort was being declared as the United States Congress established the House Un-American Activities Committee — a name that would in time become synonymous with fear, suspicion, and repression of free thinking.
Seeds of Suspicion
The committee’s origin grew from the genuine feelings of anxiety and concern in much of America. In the 1930s, the U.S. was a nation caught between ideologies. The rise of fascism in Europe and the spread of communist influence worldwide had many Americans wondering: who among us might harbor allegiances to a foreign power?
The committee’s original purpose seemed straightforward — to investigate any alleged disloyalty and subversive activities by private citizens, public employees, and organizations suspected of having communist or fascist ties. Reflecting the fears of their constituents, Congress believed they were creating a shield to protect American democracy from enemies within.
But what began as a tool for national security would gradually transform into something far more reaching, far more troubling, and far more destructive to the ideals of personal freedom — the freedom to think, act, and speak freely.
The Evolution of Fear
In its early years, the committee investigated various groups and individuals, though not in a way that garnered much attention. But history has a way of amplifying certain loud voices, and the committee found its loudest voice in Representative Martin Dies Jr. of Texas, who chaired it from 1938 to 1944.
Dies cast a wide net, often making sensational accusations that grabbed headlines but sometimes lacked substantial evidence.
The committee’s approach evolved with the times, and during World War II, it focused on Nazi sympathizers and fascist organizations. But as the war ended and the Cold War began, the committee’s attention shifted decisively toward communist influences.
This is when the committee truly found its dark purpose — and when it began touching the lives of ordinary Americans in ways that would forever change how we think about loyalty, dissent, and freedom.
The post-war years brought us to the era most associated with the committee’s infamy: the reign of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the broader phenomenon we now call McCarthyism. Though McCarthy himself wasn’t directly part of HUAC, the committee became a central stage for the anti-communist fervor that swept the nation.
Pencil Drawing of Senator Joseph McCarthy
Hollywood in the Crosshairs
Perhaps no single episode better illustrates the committee’s reach — and its tragedy — than its investigation of Hollywood. In 1947, the committee turned its attention to the film industry, convinced that communist writers, directors, and actors were using movies to spread subversive propaganda.
The hearings produced the infamous “Hollywood Ten“—writers and directors who refused to answer questions about their political beliefs and associations. These men were cited for contempt of Congress, served prison sentences, and found themselves blacklisted from working in their chosen profession.
Imagine being a screenwriter, someone whose life’s work involved crafting stories that moved audiences, only to find yourself branded as un-American for your political beliefs. The ripple effects were profound: careers destroyed, families torn apart, and an entire industry gripped by fear. Actors, writers, and directors began policing their own associations, their scripts, even their thoughts.
Pencil Drawing of American screenwriter Dalton Trumbo
This wasn’t just about Hollywood, though. The committee’s actions sent a clear message to every American: think carefully about what you believe, what you say, and whom you associate with. The very foundation of free thought and expression — pillars upon which America was built — began to crack under the weight of suspicion.
The Human Cost
The point is, history isn’t just about government policies and committees — it’s about the human stories that unfold in their wake. Teachers lost their jobs for belonging to the wrong organizations. Labor union leaders found themselves under investigation. Even librarians were questioned about the books they chose to stock.
The committee’s influence extended beyond those directly called to testify. It created what we might call a “culture of conformity” — a climate where Americans began to self-censor, to avoid controversial associations, to keep their political thoughts private. In trying to protect American values, the committee was inadvertently changing what it meant to be American.
The Reckoning
Thankfully, history has a way of (eventually) correcting course, though often at great cost. By the late 1950s and early 1960s, public opinion began to turn against the committee’s methods. The excesses became too obvious to ignore, the damage to innocent lives too severe to justify.
The committee existed until 1975, but its influence waned significantly. Court decisions began to protect the rights of those called before congressional committees. Public sentiment shifted toward valuing civil liberties over security paranoia. The very people the committee had targeted — intellectuals, artists, activists — began to speak out about their experiences.
The Long Shadow
Looking back at the House Un-American Activities Committee, we can now see it as a cautionary tale about the dangers of letting fear override our fundamental values. Historians largely view the committee’s actions as a dark chapter in American history — a time when the pursuit of security led to the trampling of civil liberties.
But here’s what makes this story particularly relevant to our times: the underlying tensions that created HUAC haven’t disappeared. Every generation faces the challenge of balancing security with freedom, of protecting society while preserving individual rights. The specific threats may change — terrorism, cyber warfare, foreign interference — but the fundamental questions remain the same.
Lessons for Today
We can only speculate how history would have unfolded had the House Un-American Activities Committee never been established. Would American society have been more open, more tolerant of dissent, more willing to engage with uncomfortable ideas? Would the civil rights movement, the anti-war protests, or the explosion of artistic expression have happened sooner?
As we navigate our own complex times, with our own fears and uncertainties, the story of HUAC whispers to us across the decades: be vigilant not just against external threats, but against the erosion of the very values that make our society worth protecting. For in the end, the greatest danger to any democracy may not come from its enemies, but from the compromises it makes with its own principles in the name of security.
Even though the House Un-American Activities Committee was disbanded nearly fifty years ago, its shadow still falls across American life, and its basic premise of persecuting people for their beliefs has seen a resurgence in America.
Back to you…
How has your personal story been influenced by some form of discrimination or persecution? Have you ever felt that it wasn’t safe to express your true feelings for fear that you would have to pay a price — a price so high that you remained silent? Do you live in a country — or have lived in a country — that is repressing freedom of thought? Sharing such stories is vital if we want personal freedom to thrive.
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The Day America Reached for the Moon: Understanding President John F. Kennedy’s Bold Promise
/in Government, History, Politics, Science, Society/by Mark LovettYesterday’s article talked about Samuel Morse and the birth of the telegraph, and how an inventor’s vision, driven by grief, jump started the era of electronic communication. But that’s not to say that such technological achievements can only be initiated by someone with technical skill. Politicians with a vision of the future far different than the present can serve as inspiration for shifts in the timeline of humanity.
One such story began with a young man standing before Congress, promising to accomplish something that had never been done in human history. On May 25th 1961, President John F. Kennedy did exactly that, declaring America would land a man on the moon before the decade’s end. But this wasn’t just about exploring space. To understand why Kennedy made this audacious promise, we must first step back into a world gripped by fear, competition, and the urgent need for national purpose.
The Shadow of Sputnik
Four years before Kennedy’s bold declaration, the world had changed overnight. On October 4, 1957, a metallic sphere no larger than a beach ball began orbiting Earth, beeping its simple signal across radio waves around the globe. Sputnik 1, launched by the Soviet Union, represented far more than a technological achievement — it was a thunderclap that shattered American confidence.
Picture the American families of 1957, stepping outside their homes to peer up at the night sky, knowing that somewhere among those familiar stars was a man-made object placed there by their Cold War adversary. The implications were terrifying. If the Soviets could launch a satellite, they could certainly launch a nuclear warhead. The same rocket technology that lifted Sputnik could deliver destruction to American cities.
The psychological impact was perhaps even more profound than the military implications. America had long considered itself the world’s technological leader, the nation that had won World War II through industrial might and innovation. Suddenly, we were playing catch-up to a communist rival we had underestimated.
A String of Soviet Triumphs
The humiliation deepened with each Soviet space achievement. In November 1957, they launched Sputnik 2, carrying a dog named Laika — proving that living creatures could survive in space. America’s first satellite attempt, Vanguard TV3, exploded on the launch pad in December 1957, earning the mocking nickname “Kaputnik” in the press.
Then came the ultimate blow: on April 12, 1961, just weeks before Kennedy’s moon speech, Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human to orbit Earth. The smiling young pilot returned to a hero’s welcome, his achievement broadcast around the world. Once again, America was second.
Consider the personal stories embedded in this moment. Gagarin, a farmer’s son who had worked in a steel foundry, now represented the triumph of Soviet ideology. Meanwhile, American parents worried about their children’s futures in a world where their nation seemed to be losing the most important race of the modern era.
The Cold War Context
To truly understand Kennedy’s moon commitment, we must appreciate the global stakes of the Cold War in 1961. This wasn’t merely a competition between two superpowers — it was a battle for the hearts and minds of the entire world. Newly independent nations in Africa, Asia, and Latin America were choosing between American capitalism and Soviet communism. Every achievement, every failure, was scrutinized as evidence of which system was superior.
Space exploration had become the ultimate proving ground. Unlike military might, which remained largely hidden and theoretical, space achievements were visible to all. When a Soviet rocket successfully launched, people around the world could see it, hear about it, and draw their own conclusions about Soviet capabilities.
Kennedy’s Personal Stakes
For Kennedy personally, the space race represented both tremendous risk and opportunity. At 43, he was the youngest elected president in American history, criticized by some as inexperienced and untested. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion had damaged his credibility. He needed a victory — something bold and inspiring that would restore confidence in American leadership.
Yet Kennedy was also a pragmatist who understood the enormous challenges involved. Before making his moon commitment, he consulted extensively with NASA officials, scientists, and engineers. He wanted to be certain that while the goal was ambitious, it was achievable. As he privately told NASA administrator James Webb, “I’m not that interested in space. But we’ve got to beat the Soviets.”
Beyond the Moon: The Deeper Goals
Kennedy’s moon commitment served multiple purposes beyond the stated goal of lunar exploration. First, it provided a concrete, measurable objective that would focus American scientific and technological efforts. Rather than competing with the Soviets on multiple fronts, America would concentrate its resources on one spectacular achievement.
Second, the moon program would drive innovation across countless industries. The technologies developed for space exploration would find applications in civilian life, from computers to materials science to telecommunications. Kennedy understood that the space program would accelerate American technological development in ways that would benefit the entire economy.
Third, the moon goal would inspire a generation of young Americans to pursue careers in science, mathematics, and engineering. The president recognized that America’s long-term competitiveness depended on nurturing scientific talent, and the space program would serve as a powerful recruitment tool.
The Ripple Effects Through History
Looking back across the decades, we can see how profoundly Kennedy’s decision shaped not just American history, but human civilization itself. The Apollo program employed over 400,000 people at its peak, driving innovations that gave us everything from cordless tools to freeze-dried food, from improved computers to advanced materials used in everything from aviation to medicine.
Earthrise, taken on December 24, 1968, by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders
But perhaps most importantly, Kennedy’s moon commitment changed how we see ourselves as a species. When Apollo 8 astronauts photographed Earth rising over the lunar horizon in 1968, that image — our blue, fragile planet suspended in the cosmic dark — helped launch the environmental movement. When Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface in 1969, he spoke for all humanity: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Consider how different our world might be had Kennedy not made that commitment. Without the technological drive of the space program, would we have developed personal computers as quickly? Would satellite communications have advanced as rapidly? Would our understanding of Earth’s climate and environment be as sophisticated?
The young president who stood before Congress that May day in 1961 was doing more than committing America to reach the moon. He was choosing hope over fear, ambition over resignation, and in doing so, he set in motion a chain of events that would transform not just America, but our entire understanding of what it means to be human in an infinite universe.
The moon, as Kennedy understood, was never really the destination. It was the journey that mattered — and the proof that when we dare to dream beyond our limitations, we can achieve the impossible.
Back to you…
Maybe your story is not as dramatic. Not one that changed the course of history. But think about those moments when you made a bold decision that change the course of your life. Then consider how that decision rippled out to affect the lives of others. And the point of telling your story now, is that the lessons you learned, the wisdom you gained in the process, can continue to benefit others.
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What Hath God Wrought: The Telegraph’s Birth and the Transformation of Human Connection
/in Entrepreneurs, History, Science, Society, Technology/by Mark LovettPicture this: It’s May 24th, 1844, and in a small room in the Supreme Court chamber of the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., a man sits nervously before a peculiar contraption of wires and metal. Samuel Finley Breese Morse, artist turned inventor, is about to send a message that will forever change how human beings connect across vast distances. With careful deliberation, he taps out a biblical phrase in his newly invented code: “What hath God wrought.”
Forty miles away in Baltimore, Maryland, his assistant Alfred Vail receives those dots and dashes, translates them back into words, and immediately sends the same message back to Washington. In that moment — lasting mere minutes — the world became fundamentally smaller, and the pace of human civilization began to quicken in ways that Samuel Morse himself could never have imagined.
Samuel Finley Breese Morse from National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution; Frederick Hill Meserve Collection
The Man Behind the Message
Samuel Morse was not born to be a communications revolutionary. Raised in a strict Calvinist household in Charlestown, Massachusetts, he initially pursued his passion as a painter, creating portraits of prominent Americans and grand historical scenes. His artistic training at Yale College and later in London shaped his meticulous eye for detail — a skill that would prove invaluable in his later scientific endeavors.
But tragedy has a way of redirecting our paths. In 1825, while Morse was painting a portrait in Washington, he received a letter telling him his wife was gravely ill. By the time he rushed home to New Haven, she had already died and been buried. The slow pace of communication in that era meant that the most important moments of our lives could slip away while we remained blissfully unaware. This personal anguish planted a seed in Morse’s mind: surely there had to be a faster way for people to share urgent news across great distances.
The inspiration struck him during a ship voyage back from Europe in 1832. Conversations about electromagnetism with fellow passengers sparked his imagination.
The Day That Changed Everything
That May morning in 1844 represented the culmination of over a decade of experimentation, frustration, and persistence. Morse had endured years of financial hardship, skeptical investors, and technical setbacks. Politicians questioned whether the government should fund such a seemingly frivolous invention. Even on the day of the demonstration, many observers remained doubtful.
Morse chose his inaugural message carefully. “What hath God wrought” came from Numbers 23:23 in the King James Bible, suggested by Annie Ellsworth, daughter of the Patent Commissioner. The phrase carries profound meaning — it speaks to divine wonder at human achievement, a recognition that we sometimes create things beyond our own understanding of their consequences.
The technical specifications were remarkably simple by today’s standards. Morse’s telegraph used an electromagnet to move a stylus that marked dots and dashes on a moving strip of paper. The famous Morse Code — combinations of short and long electrical pulses representing letters of the alphabet — allowed complex human language to be reduced to binary electrical signals. The Washington-Baltimore line stretched across wooden poles, carrying a single copper wire with the earth itself serving as the return circuit.
When that first official message crackled across the 40 miles of wire, it traveled at roughly 186,000 miles per second — the speed of light through the copper conductor. Compare this to the fastest previous method of long-distance communication: a horse and rider, covering perhaps 30 miles in a day over rough terrain.
The Fabric of Society Rewoven
The telegraph didn’t just speed up communication — it fundamentally altered the rhythm of human existence. Within a decade, telegraph lines were spreading across America like a spider’s web, connecting distant cities and remote towns to a shared nervous system of information.
Consider how this changed the simple act of conducting business. Before the telegraph, a merchant in New York who wanted to know grain prices in Chicago had to wait weeks for a letter. Decisions were made with old information, and fortunes were built on who could move physical information fastest. The telegraph democratized market information, creating the foundation for modern commodity exchanges and stock markets. Suddenly, prices could be coordinated across vast distances, creating truly national markets for the first time in human history.
The transformation went far deeper than commerce. Families separated by migration could maintain relationships in ways previously impossible. A mother in Boston could know within hours if her son in California was safe after an earthquake. Young people could court across state lines through romantic telegrams. The very notion of “long-distance relationships” was born.
Perhaps most profoundly, the telegraph began to standardize time itself. Before instant communication, every town kept its own time based on the sun’s position. But railroad schedules coordinated by telegraph required synchronized clocks across entire regions. The concept of time zones — which we now take for granted — emerged directly from the telegraph’s need to coordinate activities across vast distances.
The Ripples Through Time
Standing here in 2025, we can trace direct lines from Morse’s first message to the device in your pocket. The telegraph established the first principles of electronic communication: encoding human language into electrical signals, transmitting those signals across distances, and decoding them back into meaning. Every text message, every email, every video call follows the fundamental pattern Samuel Morse established that May morning.
The telegraph also birthed the first global communication networks. By the 1860s, underwater cables connected America to Europe. News of Lincoln’s assassination reached London in days, not weeks. The world’s first “information superhighway” was built from copper wire and wooden poles, but it established the template for our modern internet.
More subtly, the telegraph began humanity’s complicated relationship with instant communication. The same technology that could save lives by quickly summoning doctors could also spread panic through false rumors. The same wires that connected distant lovers also enabled new forms of fraud and deception. We see these tensions playing out today in our debates about social media, digital privacy, and information verification.
Imagining the Alternative
What if Samuel Morse had remained focused solely on painting? What if Annie Ellsworth had suggested a different biblical verse, or no verse at all? What if congressional funding had been denied by just one vote?
Without the telegraph, the American Civil War might have unfolded differently. Lincoln’s ability to coordinate Union forces across vast distances proved crucial to victory. The transcontinental railroad, built with telegraph coordination, might have taken decades longer to complete. The settling of the American West would have proceeded more slowly and chaotically.
Globally, the British Empire‘s ability to govern distant colonies depended heavily on telegraph cables. Without instant communication to London, colonial independence movements might have succeeded earlier, or imperial control might have required even more brutal local enforcement.
Perhaps most intriguingly, our entire relationship with time and distance might have evolved differently. Would we have developed different social structures, different concepts of privacy, different expectations about response times and availability?
The Timeless Lesson
Samuel Morse’s legacy reminds us that individual human curiosity, persistence, and ingenuity can reshape the world in ways we never anticipate. He set out to solve a personal problem — the slow pace of communication that had cost him his final moments with his dying wife. Instead, he created the foundation for the connected world we inhabit today.
The next time your phone buzzes with a message from someone thousands of miles away, remember that May morning in 1844. Remember Samuel Morse tapping out “What hath God wrought” and marveling at the power of human innovation to compress time and space. In our age of instant global communication, we are all still living in the world that telegraph built, dot by dash by dot.
Back to you…
Think about how communication technology has affected your life. Your romances, your career path, your view of the world. Imagine a life that didn’t have instant access to loved ones. Maybe there’s a thread of your personal story that involves a digital connection. Connections made, connections broken, or miscommunication.
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Muneesh Jain Storytelling at The Moth in Traverse City
/in Career, Emotions, Family, Identity, Relationships, The Moth/by Mark LovettYou may remember Peter Aguero’s Moth story of how the simple suggestion of taking a pottery class altered his outlook on life. Different circumstances in this case, but Muneesh Jain’s Moth story told in Traverse City also happens to hinge on a moment in time that revised the trajectory his life was on.
But there’s always a backstory to such moments, and Muneesh talks about his parent’s expectations that he could never meet, no matter how hard he tried.
And he did try, to the point that his heath was at risk. But walking away from success resulted in his disconnecting from his family, as well as society itself. Rather than a short brief, Muneesh was out of sorts for five full years.
And then… Something unexpected happens. Something that reignites is passion, and a lifelong dream. The journey he embarks upon connects him to new people in ways he couldn’t predict, and the process seems to resurrect him. (no spoilers here — you’ll have to hear his story to learn the details of his journey)
As these articles are fueled by java, you can always…
While staying with friends in Seattle, a scene unfolds we can’t possibly expect.
As the saying goes, “It’s never too late.” For Muneesh, the subtext is that it wasn’t too late to reconnect to his mother, and in doing so, come to understand her in a way that wasn’t possible while growing up.
Transcript
My parents are from India. So, in our house, that meant we had a high bar set for academic achievement, and a specific type of professional success: doctor, lawyer, engineer. By the time my sister was 12, she knew she was going to be a doctor, just like my dad.
When I was nine, I called a family meeting to let everyone know I was never going to be a doctor, or a lawyer, or an engineer. I was going to be a gymnast. My parents, they tolerated it, but told me that one day I was going to have to grow out of it. But I went to the gym six days a week, five hours a night. And by the time I was a teenager, I was training for the Olympics. Then multiple injuries ended my career. My folks, they said, “Alright, you got that out of your system. Now it’s time to focus on your education.”
I needed them to be impressed with me, the way they were my sister. I just, I couldn’t wrap my head around doing it their way. So I came up with a bigger idea. When I was 19, I got a job with ESPN. I was producing live segments for Sportscenter, ESPN news, hanging out with my sports idols. My folks, they kept reminding me, “Don’t let this get in the way of your schoolwork.”
Alright, fine. If that wasn’t good enough, I came up with a bigger idea. I left the network and moved to Detroit, Michigan, a city that I love, and I started a sports magazine. I sold ads, I found distributors, I built a staff with grown-ass people who had kids older than me. And we were killing it. We were up to 50,000 subscribers. People were recognizing me on the street. Hell, Muhammad Ali said he liked my magazine.
But every time I’d see my parents, they’d just ask me, “When are you going back to college? Get that degree.”
This time, there was no bigger idea. I had to make this work. I doubled down, worked twice as hard, which also meant that I pretty much stopped sleeping entirely and started drinking and drugging the nights away to manage my stress levels. And when I was 24, my doctor told me that I was six months away from a heart attack.
I either had to get rid of the magazine or die. So I gave up. And something broke inside of me. And I couldn’t face my parents. I took the money I’d saved from ESPN and the magazine, and I ran away. I moved to New York into a tiny 160-square-foot studio apartment where the windows didn’t even open, and it was there that my self-imposed exile began. Slowly losing contact with every human I’d ever met.
The delivery guy would just leave the food outside my apartment because I couldn’t even make eye contact with him. I was a failure.
My parents would call and I never knew what to say. My dad would lecture me that I wasn’t even a part of the family anymore. My mom would yell at me that I needed to get my life together. And every conversation just ended in tears. So I stopped answering their calls. Then they started sending me money to keep me alive, and I took it, and that made me hate myself so much more. And so I just stopped leaving my apartment entirely.
The TV would be on 24 hours a day. I wasn’t watching at all. I just needed flashing images and noise to block out the constant stream of shame, regret, self-loathing that was clanging around the inside of my skull.
And that became my life. Every day, all day, living in near isolation for five years.
One day, a baseball game just happened to be on. Now, I hadn’t watched a sporting event of any kind since the death of my magazine. It was always just too hard. But on this day, I was so broken, I just stared motionlessly at the screen in front of me. And within a couple of innings, something strange was happening. I felt myself sitting up in my bed, engaging with something outside of my own head. I was smiling. I mean, actually smiling, for the first time in five years.
By the time the game ended, I’d already ordered the MLB TV package and just started mainlining baseball. I was watching every game, reading every article, going back over the last five years to see everything that I’d missed. And in the middle of it all, I remembered a dream I had when I was six.
You know, “One day, I’m gonna see a baseball game at all 30 MLB stadiums.” It’s one of those silly things that a lot of baseball fans want to do, but few actually get a chance to do it. And the ones who do it, do it over the course of a lifetime, like a normal human person.
But in this moment, nobody even knew that I existed. I could disappear off the planet and no one would notice. So I said, “Screw it. I’m going to do it. And I’m gonna do it in one season.” I’m going to drive 17,000 miles in 95 days and go to a baseball game at all 30 ballparks. I started obsessively poring over maps and schedules, planning out my route.
Every time I’d go down to the bodega to buy another pack of cigarettes, instead, I would take that money out of the ATM, go back up to my apartment, shove it underneath my mattress. By the time the next baseball season came around, I’d saved $6,000 and quit smoking.
I was ready to go. I called my parents to let them know what I was doing, and they really didn’t know what to say. They were just happy that I was alive. And I hit the road. Every 48 hours I was in a new city. But I didn’t want to just sit in the ballpark alone. I needed a way to reintegrate myself into society. The problem was, I had completely forgotten how to even have a conversation with somebody else.
So I invented a podcast. I couldn’t have cared less if anybody actually listened to this thing. I just needed an excuse to go talk to strangers. And it was working. People were talking to me about the stats of their favorite ball players, the histories of their ballparks. One kid at Citi Field at a Mets game spent 20 minutes meticulously breaking down why it was that the Yankees sucked.
And I bounced from ballpark to ballpark. I noticed that my conversations, they were evolving. I talked to a father and son in Baltimore, where after our official interview, the father pulled me aside to quietly confide in me that he didn’t really have a relationship with his eldest son, but his youngest, his youngest loved baseball, so he knew that at least they’d be able to talk about that.
I talked to a mother and daughter in San Francisco who had been going to games together for 20 years. Three generations of women in Texas. The grandmother proudly shoving Little Laney, her nine-year-old granddaughter, in front of my microphone, saying, “Little Laney, tell the nice man what you do all your school reports on.” And Little Laney excitedly screams out, “The Texas Rangers!”
And I realized we weren’t really even talking about baseball anymore. We were talking about family connection.
By the time I got to LA, I’d already driven 8,000 miles on my own. I was halfway done with my tour. But this was my hell week, because the Angels and the Dodgers rarely play at home at the same time. I had to catch a game in Anaheim, drive 17 hours up to Seattle, turn back around, drive 17 hours back to LA, then 30 hours to Minnesota. That’s 4,000 miles in 10 days. But I was a man possessed, nothing was going to stop me.
After my Angels game, I hopped in the car and headed up north. But about halfway into the drive, my vision starts to get blurry and my body starts to uncontrollably shake. I pull over just in time to open the door and projectile vomit all over the side of the highway. I didn’t know what to do, so I called my dad. He just sighed into the phone and said, “You have food poisoning.” What am I supposed to do from here? “Gatorade and Pepto Bismol.”
My mom gets on the phone and starts screaming at me. This is ridiculous. You need to take better care of yourself and I hung up. I wasn’t in the mood for another lecture. I made it to Seattle in time for my game by double fisting Gatorade and Pepto Bismol. I was staying with some family friends so I knew they’d be able to take care of me.
The next day, I hear a knock at the door. Nobody’s home, so I walk upstairs and through the glass door, I see the silhouette of a 4 foot 10, 90 pound little woman. I open the door and just say, “What are you doing here, Mother?”
And she says, “I’m here to help you drive.” Now, she must have seen the panic on my face, because she followed that up with, “And I’ve been listening to your podcast. I know you don’t take bathroom or food breaks when you’re on the road, so I’m not going to take any breaks either. We’re going to stay on your schedule.” I didn’t know she was listening to the podcast.
And then she said one more thing. “I’m driving the whole way, so you’ve got two options. You sit next to me and you can sleep or we can talk.” Now, I honestly can’t remember the last time my mom and I had been in the same room together without it devolving into tears. So I said, “Okay, Mama.” I got in the car and I immediately went to sleep.
I slept the entire way to LA and when we got there, she said, “I’m not going to go to the baseball game with you.” I said, “Why not?” She said, “Because you’ve got work to do. And if people see you there with your mother, they’re not going to want to talk to you.” I said, “You’re being ridiculous, of course you’re going to come,” and I got her a ticket.
We’re at Dodger Stadium and I start interviewing the gentleman sitting next to me as I’d done at every ballpark before. My mom, she moves to the seat behind us to give us some space to chat. And after the interview is over, I can hear her talking to her new seatmate. And her new seatmate’s asking, “Wow, you must be a huge baseball fan to do this type of road trip.” And my mom just answers, “No. I really don’t like baseball. I like watching my son watch baseball.” I pretended like I didn’t hear that.
After the game was over, we’re walking back to the car and she stops me. She wants to show me a picture she had taken during the game. And I looked down on her phone and it’s actually, it’s a picture of me and the guy that I had been interviewing. And she just says, “Look. You’re smiling.”
I said, “When are you going home, Mama?” And she said, “No, no, no, no. I’m going to drive with you to Minnesota too.” This time, there was no panic on my face. I said, “Okay, we’re going to split the drive and let’s talk.”
As we made our way out east, I started talking to my mom the way that I had been talking to these strangers at the ballpark these last couple of months, asking her stories about her life. You know, this woman, she survived three wars between India and Pakistan. I didn’t know that.
She told me the story of how her and my dad’s arranged marriage came to be. I knew they were arranged, I just never knew how or why it happened. I don’t know why I never bothered to ask her that.
Right before we got to Minnesota, we made a quick pit stop in South Dakota at Mount Rushmore. And as we’re walking up to the monument, my mom peeled off to call my dad and I was eavesdropping and I could hear her say, “As immigrants to this country, we’d always wanted to see Mount Rushmore. We just never found a reason to make the trip. This is all so exciting. I can’t wait for you to be able to see… our son… is just so happy.”
Thank you.
Back to you…
As unique as the details of Muneesh’s story are, the themes are all too common. Expectations. Failure. Shame. And also being open to those times when a simple circumstance serves as inspiration to reclaim the life that’s been waiting for you. Yes, the first few steps require initiative, but success manifests when others are influential elements in your narrative.
If you have a story to tell of getting lost, then finding yourself, don’t forget the cast of characters that accompanied you on the road to recovery. With them, you would still be lost.
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