“If you work really hard, and you’re kind… amazing things will happen.” ~Conan O’Brien
Literacy Council, Searcy , Ark.
Tonight was a heck of a night for television. Its the night for the big Help For Haiti Now telethon and Conan O’Brien’s last night on the Tonight Show.
Sometimes I feel like life cycles in themes. But I’m not talking about any modes I get in or any sort of fads. In observing daily life, on both the large and small scale, I genuinely feel like things – the tendency of life – tends to point in a certain direction.
Of course, the disaster in Haiti is extraordinary. Its a horrible thing and it elicits a major response. But then I photograph people doing local things – like a group of students helping out at the local literacy council. They help shelve books and get workbooks in order to teach illiterate adults to read.
And then I come home. Of course, every channel carried the telethon. But the theme even carried into Conan’s last night.
In the end, Conan – who, in my book, is nothing but a class act – gave his final speech as the Tonight Show host. And, with his voice thinning and his hand gestures becoming more pronounced as someone who is choking back tears might do… he said, “If you work really hard, and you’re kind… amazing things will happen.”
Whatever you’re doing, wherever you are… be kind. Never doubt that it might just make a world of difference.
Stay tuned,
-Noah D.
