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So this is going to sound like the setup to a true crime podcast, but stay with me.

Every morning in his twenties, Kevin Kelly would walk three blocks to Route 22 in New Jersey, stick out his thumb, and wait for a stranger to take him to work.

This was his commute. He had to punch in at 8 o'clock sharp at a warehouse where he worked as a packer. He was never late. Not once. Day after day, some random commuter, someone with their own problems, their own deadlines, their own reasons to keep driving, would stop and give this scruffy guy a ride to a warehouse job.

And Kevin would stand there, thumb out, asking himself the same question every morning: "How will the miracle happen today?"

Not if the miracle would happen. How.

Most of us, if we found ourselves hitchhiking to a warehouse job, would be asking different questions. Like, "Where did my life go wrong?" Or "Should I buy a bicycle?" Or "Is that guy slowing down to give me a ride or mass murder me?"

But Kevin Kelly, who would later co-found Wired Magazine and become one of the most influential technology thinkers alive, treated each morning commute like unwrapping a present. Who would the universe send today? What form would the kindness take?

Here's today's dumb idea, and I want you to feel how uncomfortable it makes you:

Not in the inspirational-poster sense. In the literal, operational, put-it-into-practice-daily sense.

You can summon generosity from strangers by deliberately putting yourself in a position to need help. The more you practice receiving, the more reliably miracles appear.

We've spent the last fifty years building an entire culture around the opposite of this. Self-sufficiency. Self-reliance. Self-made success. The word "dependent" is basically an insult now. Tony Robbins didn't build an empire teaching people to stand on the side of the road with their thumb out. "Awaken the Giant Within" not, "Awaken the Giant in the Passing Motorist Who Might Take Pity On You."

And safety experts? They've been warning us about "stranger danger" since we were kids. The entire premise of modern parenting is that strangers are serial killers until proven otherwise.

But Kevin Kelly spent decades conducting an unintentional experiment that challenges everything we believe about self-reliance. And his findings are kind of extraordinary.

After his hitchhiking days, Kevin took his warehouse wages and traveled through Asia for eight years. He lost track of the number of times strangers went wildly out of their way to help him. In the Philippines, a family living in a shack opened their last can of tinned meat to feed him — a stranger who just needed a place to crash. In the Himalayas, a group of firewood harvesters shared their tiny shelter when he stumbled into their campfire circle unannounced. They slept like sardines under a single blanket while snow fell outside.

One year, Kevin decided to ride his bike across America. From San Francisco to New York. When he got past the Rockies, state parks became pretty scarce, so he developed a system. As darkness fell, he'd scout for a likely house. Something neat with a big lawn in back and easy access for his bike. Then he'd ring the doorbell.

"Hello. I'm riding my bike across America. I'd like to pitch my tent tonight where I have permission and where someone knows where I am. I've just eaten dinner. I'll be gone first thing in the morning. Would you mind if I put up my tent in your backyard?"

He was never turned away. Not once. Across the entire country.

And almost nobody could actually sit inside their house watching TV while a guy who was riding his bicycle across America was camping in their backyard. What if he was famous? So Kevin would get invited in for dessert. For an interview. His job in those moments was clear — he was to relate his adventure. He was giving them a chance to vicariously ride a bicycle across America. Through his story, his journey became part of their lives.

"In exchange," he writes, "I would get a place to camp and a dish of ice cream. It was a sweet deal that benefited both of us."

He didn't see himself as taking. Instead, he saw the exchange more like this: he offered trust, helplessness, a story. They offered shelter, ice cream, connection. Both parties walked away richer.

But maybe the wildest example is when Kevin was at a hotel in Dalarna, Sweden, mid-summer. He asked the desk clerk how he could reach Carl Larsson's house (a famous painter) about 150 miles away.

The clerk handed him her car keys.

Her personal car keys. To a stranger. For a 150-mile journey.

Kevin reflects on this with genuine bewilderment. He writes: "I am not sure I would have done what they did and let me sleep in the backyard. The 'me' on the bicycle had a wild tangled beard, had not showered for weeks, and appeared destitute."

He's being honest about something most of us feel but won't say: we're not sure we'd extend the same generosity we benefit from. We like to think we would. But we're not sure.

But people kept doing it for him. Reliably. For decades.

Kevin's theory about what makes these moments possible goes like this:

He believes these gifts aren't random cosmic rays. They're summoned. The person asking for help creates a kind of opening — a space that the giver gets to fill. And filling that space feels good for both people.

But, and this is important, you have to practice being in that open position. You have to get comfortable with vulnerability.

This is where it gets uncomfortable for the experts.

The entire self-improvement industry is built on the premise that needing help is a problem to be solved. Brené Brown has made a career talking about vulnerability, but even she frames it as something to overcome rather than something to practice. Most therapy aims to build independence — helping you need other people less.

And the safety apparatus of modern life is basically organized around the principle that strangers cannot be trusted. "Don't talk to strangers" isn't just advice for kids, it's the unofficial motto of modern existence. We've designed entire apps so we never have to ask a stranger for directions.

Most people call this “learned helplessness.” The safety experts would call it reckless. And the self-help industry would call it codependency.

But Kevin Kelly calls it a law of the universe:

So what's actually happening when you let someone help you?

In the 1960s, psychologists Jon Jecker and David Landy stumbled onto something weird while studying at the University of California. They had subjects perform a task to earn money, and then afterward, the researcher would ask some subjects to return the money as a personal favor. The people who gave the money back liked the researcher more afterward.

This became known as the Ben Franklin Effect, because Franklin wrote about using this exact technique to win over a political rival. He asked the rival to lend him a rare book. The rival did. And from then on, the rival was friendlier to Franklin.

Allan Luks, the former head of Big Brothers Big Sisters, documented what he called "helper's high" — a literal endorphin rush that people experience when they help others. Brain imaging studies by neuroscientist Jordan Grafman at the National Institutes of Health have shown that acts of generosity activate the mesolimbic pathway — the same reward circuit triggered by food and sex.

So when Kevin Kelly stood on Route 22 with his thumb out, he wasn't just asking for a ride. He was offering passing motorists an opportunity to feel good. He was giving them a gift wrapped in the shape of his own need.

The research also shows that interdependence (the fancy psychology term for mutual reliance) is actually associated with better psychological outcomes than pure independence. Dr. Jean Baker Miller at Wellesley's Stone Center developed what's called "relational-cultural theory," which argues that connection and mutual dependence aren't signs of weakness; they're how humans actually thrive.

It means the opposite of paranoia. Instead of believing everyone is out to get you, you believe everyone is out to help you. Strangers are working behind your back to keep you going, prop you up, and get you on your path. The story of your life becomes one huge elaborate conspiracy to lift you up.

Kevin Kelly calls this his actual operating system. He doesn't hope for kindness. He expects it. Not in an entitled way, but in the way you expect the sun to come up. It's not faith in specific individuals. It's faith in the pattern.

After decades of hitchhiking, crashing on strangers' floors, and knocking on doors asking to camp in backyards, the pattern has never failed him.

Use it in a sentence: "I cultivated pronoia by standing in the rain outside a Wendy's with a flat tire until someone with a spare showed up—and they always do."

Use responsibly.

Step one: Identify something you need help with that you would normally solve yourself — directions, carrying something, reaching something on a high shelf, whatever.

Step two: Ask a stranger for help. An actual stranger — not a friend, not an app.

Step three: When they help you, don't just say thanks and move on. Receive it. Notice how they seem to feel. Notice how you feel. Let it be an actual moment between two humans.

Bonus points if you ask your question with the internal framing: "How will the miracle happen today?" Instead of worrying whether they'll say no, get curious about how the help will arrive.

Kevin Kelly says that when you stand in this posture, genuinely open to receiving, the help becomes almost inevitable. The question is never if. The question is how.

Kevin Kelly ends his essay with an image I keep thinking about. He says we're all at the receiving end of a huge gift simply by being alive. Whether you believe existence is a billion unlikely accidents or something more intentional, either way, we didn't earn this. Nobody asked us to fill out an application for consciousness. It just... happened.

And every moment, the gift keeps coming. Colors. Cinnamon rolls. Bubbles. Touchdowns. Whispers. Sand on our bare feet.

Thanks for getting dumb with me today.

Until next time, stay curious, stay helpless, and remember: the miracle isn't whether it will happen. The miracle is how.

David