Preface from Buoyant:
I don’t recall who chose to watch a film about the Enigma code that particular Saturday night. Was it my husband or me?
Ironic, I thought much later. The Imitation Game, a film about the British cracking the German code that masked so many powerful secrets and ultimately led to the liberation of Europe, was a metaphor for the revelations about to unfold in my life.
My husband sat at a distance, engrossed in the film, while I perched on the sofa, ignoring it. My eyes were focused on a pile of unopened envelopes that held eight years of bank statements.
I discovered the paper trail when I uncovered a private account on my husband’s computer. The account was buried beneath a layer of security that erased daily searches and routinely changed passwords. I was an inexperienced sleuth, but once I learned of the bank account, I surreptitiously ordered every obtainable statement. I feared they would open Pandora’s box, and I would learn things from which there would be no return.
For days, the envelopes remained unopened, taunting me.
I recall the moment my hand reached for the top statement but recoiled. I thought: Destroy them. Toss them unopened into the fireplace that is providing the only warmth in the room this evening. Preserve your perfect life and your idyllic twenty-eight-year marriage, let those envelopes keep their secrets. Save yourself from what is likely to spill forth and char your most treasured memories.
Over the previous six weeks, something long dormant stirred and then emerged as a formidable force that demanded I take a closer look at my life. It prodded me to begin pulling at threads. Each thread I tugged revealed something incongruous with the life I thought I was living. Each thread exposed events that teased me with the knowledge that things were far different from what I believed about my husband and our long, happy marriage. The more I unraveled, the more I yearned to see it all. How could I get a clear bird’s-eye view of my life?
The answer came as I recalled a friend’s offhand comment from long ago: “When you want to know the truth about anything, follow the money.” Her voice led me to the bank account and, ultimately, to the bank statements.
I was at an inflection point from which there would be no return. My chest literally hurt. My breathing shallowed.
My intuition did not fail me. What I learned that night changed everything. Opening those envelopes obliterated thirty years of certainty. I remember thinking that my marriage was a precious crystal, and that night it shattered. So much of what I thought to be true turned out to be a myth, outwardly beautiful, but nonetheless a myth. Ultimately, the envelopes led me to a well-concealed parallel life, one woven into our story from its earliest days. They shattered the storybook illusion that held my family together.
That night I pulled back the curtain, and, like the revered Wizard of Oz, my husband turned out to be someone far different from his public persona. He was a man I no longer recognized.
Only in time would I come to see that this rupture had its genesis in lives lived long before we even met, in fault lines formed well before I entered his story, and in my own complicity: moving through the world in a way I had learned young, with an unguarded, self-assured tendency to trust what was offered, to mistake what was visible for the whole. But this reckoning of my marriage would come much later.
That evening I wasn’t thinking about the undercurrents, only the consequences. What would I, what could I, do with the information as it spilled forth? Could I walk away from the three-decade relationship at the core of my life, a source of strength and, as I long thought, love? How would this affect my two young adult children whose happiness meant everything to me? Could I dismantle a life that had given them, and me, solace and joy for decades?
There’s no question it might have been easier to stay in my marriage. But given what I’d learned, I didn’t hesitate a moment before deciding to end it on April 26, 2015. In a single instant, I confronted an avalanche of questions about my own life and about the marriage I long treasured.
That night, despite all the questions that spilled forth, there was one thing about which I had absolute, unshakable clarity: I deserved better.
The first two envelopes dealt a fatal blow to my long marriage. In the wee hours, at 2:00 a.m., I asked my husband to leave. I made a life-shattering decision to let go of someone I loved and the one person who shared my most intimate memories. In making that decision, I knew I had opened myself to emotional and financial vulnerability. I was terrified but undeterred as I opted to free-fall without a net, giving up what most people strive for: companionship, security, and love. That evening set me on a course in which I had to rebuild my entire life, one that is today unrecognizable from the one I had been living.
This wasn’t my first crucible.
From The Two Most Important Days
“The two most important days in your life are the day you are born and the day you find out why.”
–Mark Twain
Purpose often lurks in the most unexpected of places. For Mariah Smith, her life’s purpose was patiently waiting to be discovered in the parking lot of a fast food restaurant.
“I was at a Sonic with my mom and saw a homeless man. He was crouched down on the ground and had a little cart with him that probably had everything he owned with him. I looked in the back seat and saw that we had a blanket, so I got out and gave him the food that we had ordered and the blanket and he immediately wrapped the blanket around himself and started eating. That night changed my life forever and it really opened my eyes.”
At the time, Mariah was 17 years old, a high school student in Virginia Beach, Virginia. This unexpected encounter with one homeless man lingered in Mariah’s mind, haunting her, inspiring her. You see, Mariah had never gone to sleep hungry, yet her empathy was so profound that it changed her life—and the lives of so many others.
Mariah’s simple act of kindness was so easy. It made her yearn to do more. She began to wonder, what else could the homeless man in the parking lot have used? What other basic necessities could she have provided? What could she offer to others with similar needs? What more could she do?
Mariah’s desire to serve others took root. “I had never really known the true meaning of hunger until I saw the way that man ate what I had given him. He was starving. After seeing that, I wanted to make sure that with every blanket I also gave a brown bag lunch. A peanut butter and jelly sandwich, bag of chips, cookies, piece of fruit, and a bottle of water that they can refill. I know that a blanket and a lunch do not seem like much, but to someone who is hungry and sleeping on the ground it is the difference between being hungry and cold... or not.”
Mariah knew firsthand what it meant to receive help from a stranger. She had been abandoned by her biological mother on Christmas Eve. Fate conspired to give her a second chance when she found foster parents who provided her with a safe, loving home. Perhaps that experience transformed her worldview and led to the assertion that everyone deserves to be safe and to know what it means to be cared for.
Mariah began making trip after trip to deliver useful goods to those in her hometown that were homeless. She soon formed a non-profit organization called Blankets for the Homeless. Mariah embarked on this work on her own, but today volunteers now deliver items directly to people on the street, rather than to shelters, which would be easier but would not have the same impact. What Mariah calls “delivering with dignity” is a core part of the mission. Volunteers offer those who are homeless sleeping bags, clothing, hats, ponchos, and backpacks. In the summer, they deliver sunscreen and bug spray. In the winter, they gift heavy coats and other warm clothing. By chatting with people they are helping, the volunteers network to find others who are homeless and in need of assistance.
Since the inception of Blankets for the Homeless, Mariah and the other volunteers have hand-delivered more than 80,000 blankets and lunches. They are active throughout several cities in Virginia and the program’s geographical reach continues to expand as more volunteers are inspired to sign on to help their homeless neighbors. Blankets for the Homeless has been featured in the media, resulting in the recruitment of additional volunteers who step up to help collect and distribute goods.
When Mariah gives television and radio interviews, she encourages others to keep what she calls a “blessing box” in their car, a repository that enables spontaneous generosity ⎯on-the-spot help with things like a bottle of water, toiletries, and warm gloves.
Purpose and love are intimately intertwined and a purposeful life is a life filled with love.
For example, Mariah’s purpose in life is to deliver little things that have great impact. What better example is there of making life better by making other lives better?
Mark Twain once said, “The two most important days of your life are the day that you are born and the day you find out why.” For many, this clarity—the alignment of head and heart⎯often emerges well into adulthood, if at all. Mariah is both an exception and exceptional in that she found her alignment at a young age.
Finding your own “why” is a life-changing moment.