“Those are the real things that make me smile or make me happy and I realized that the happier I am, the more productive I am, the more willing I am to go after my own dreams and goals. So I figured the best way to change the world was to start one person at a time.” Armed with only his 2000 Nissan Altima, a video camera, a BlackBerry, a laptop, a GPS unit, a small tent, a diary and about $2,000, Kellogg’s mission to save the world one person at a time took him from Watertown, NY down to Key West and back again.
At first Kellogg was taken aback thinking, “That’s not really helping. I could mulch for you or mow your lawn.” But the man said, “Just listen.” Kellogg sat down to a cup of coffee on the porch, “and he opened up to me pouring out his heart and soul.” The man was sixty years old and had just retired the previous year along with his wife of the same age. The couple had no children and had been working their whole lives for a retirement trip together which would afford them all they dreamed of doing at this stage in their lives.
Kellogg traveled approximately 10,000 miles in 50 days, performing 115 different random acts of kindness while living out of his own car. His assistance included changing flat tires, splitting logs for folks who heated their homes with wood, and blacktopping driveways.
Two months after their retirement the wife was killed in a tragic car accident. “I get emotional talking about it even now,” said Kellogg, “to be with a man who was simply grieving.” The funeral was two months prior and the man confessed to Kellogg that he had not spoken to anyone since. “No one wanted to listen,” he explained.
However, what surprised Kellogg the most was the fact that just sitting down to listen to someone proved the most profound assistance of all. One such encounter came while driving through Georgia. Kellogg, a true northern New Yorker, felt a little out of his element. He spotted a man on his front porch reading the newspaper and did what he always did: he pulls over saying, “Hi, my name is Tyler. Can I help you with something?”
Kellogg spent three hours with this widower and within the hour he laughed. In another hour the man was telling jokes, and by the end Kellogg felt they had become good friends. “All it took was a few hours to start his recovery,” said Kellogg, “but no one had done it. No one had given him the time to listen.”
>> Recovery
The man just looked back at Kellogg like someone at a funeral. “It made me uncomfortable. It made me confused and I didn’t know what had happened,” said Kellogg uncertain. So he repeated his offer, “Can I help you with something?” The man’s reply was, “You can listen.”
>>
ONE LESSON
After Kellogg completed his Samaritan tasks he asked each individual the same question. What is one life lesson that you learned that you wish you had known from the beginning? “There are six or seven billion people on earth. Every one of them has a story and every one of them has a lesson they’ve learned. I’m 21 years old. I have a lot of living left, hopefully, and if I can take a lesson away from each person, I’ll be that much further along,” explains Kellogg. “I don’t think I can just learn it by hearing it, but I do believe that when I come to a situation where the lesson is relevant then maybe I can recognize it.” Out of 115 people, over 30 said “don’t be afraid to take risks.” The consensus was that it is not doing something that you will regret later.
>> LISTEN
However, many of the strangers agreed on another life lesson. Listen. Just listen. “I had mothers say they should have listened to their sons. I had husbands say they should have listened to their ex-wives or wives. I had grandparents say that they learned more from their grandchildren than they learned from their entire life,” Kellogg reveals. “I had people confess to being an alcoholic, confess that they had been raped, within 15 minutes of talking to them.” “I thought that helping was something physical. I thought that helping was shoveling, raking, cutting wood or something manly. It really caught me off-guard that people just wanted to be heard. That sometimes the best way you can help someone is just to listen to them.” For Kellogg the journey is just beginning. His summer project turned into an internship writing speeches and working with English and Communications professor Dr. David Fregoe to refine Kellogg’s skills from just being a talker to becoming a public speaker. Kellogg’s speaking engagements have been numerous, including a recent trip to the DC Summit where he shared his vision of changing the world with a very select group of his peers and even invited former President Clinton to a game of Rock, Paper, Scissors. His trip to Key West has been the catalyst for Kellogg’s own brand of “Do Good,” spreading the word and inspiring others to take risks, follow their dreams or to change the world one person at a time. w w w. p o t s d a m . e d u /p e o p l e
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