Suleika Jaouad

Along the way, we visited some of those strangers who'd written to me.

I needed their advice also to say to them, thank you.

I went to Ohio and stayed with Howard, the retired professor.

When you've suffered a loss or a trauma, the impulse can be to guard your heart.

But Howard urged me to open myself up to uncertainty, to the possibilities of new love, new loss.

Howard will never be cured of illness, and as a young man, he had no way of predicting how long he'd live, but that didn't stop him from getting married.

Howard has grandkids now and takes weekly ballroom dancing lessons with his wife.

When I visited them, they'd recently celebrated their 50th anniversary.

In his letter to me, he'd written, meaning is not found in the material realm.

It's not in dinner, jazz, cocktails or conversation.

Meaning is what's left when everything else is stripped away.

I went to Texas and I visited little GQ on death row.

He asked me what I did to pass all that time I'd spent in a hospital room.

When I told him I got really, really good at Scrabble, he said, me too, and explained how even though he spends most of his days in solitary confinement, he and his neighboring prisoners make board games out of paper and call out their plays through their meal slots.

a testament to the incredible tenacity of the human spirit and our ability to adapt with creativity.

And my last stop was in Florida to see that teenage girl who'd sent me all those emojis.

Her name is unique, which is perfect, because she's the most luminous, curious person I've ever met.

I asked her what she wants to do next, and she said, I want to go to college and travel and eat weird foods like octopus that I've never tasted before and come visit you in New York and go camping, but I'm scared of bugs, but I still want to go camping.

I was in awe of her, that she could be so optimistic and so full of plans for the future, given everything she'd been through.

But as Younique showed me, it is far more radical and dangerous to have hope than to live hemmed in by fear.