The other night I went against my own promise to myself and watched the news.

The first five events were wildfires destroying 4,000 acres in North Carolina; 730 men, women and children being killed in one day in the war in the Middle East; an angry veteran shouting down a member of Congress at a town-hall meeting; a deadly measles outbreak continuing in Texas; and a jury awarding a billion dollar judgment against the manufacturer of a popular weed killer that can cause cancer.

No wonder that the United States has dropped to 24th, its lowest rank ever, in a report on CBS about the happiest countries in the world today.

After exhausting days at their jobs to keep their families surviving, working class Americans get to watch tragedies in the news that drive down their misery index level even lower than it was before they got home.

Well, what if we had a nightly news TV show called “Beautiful People”? Would nobody watch? And who would these beautiful people be?

A website called the 143 Movement states: “Beautiful people do not just happen. The most beautiful people we know have known defeat and known suffering, known struggle, known loss and have found their way out of the depths. These people have an appreciation, a sensitivity, an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.

“You are not perfect by any means, but if your intentions are good, your heart is pure and you love with everything you have, you are worth it.”

The Movement added: “Growth is a required part of the human curriculum. It’s just how and when we take the course. The purpose of the difficulty is to turn you into the person who could handle it with grace. Not just life in front of you transforms, everything else does, too. In other words, your pain and struggle are only temporary and the transformation they bring to your life will last forever.”

So, I’ll pretend I’m the anchorman for my news program called “Beautiful People.”

“A woman in Rhode Island today was trying to find a parking place to go into a store and buy a cup of coffee. Another woman flagged her down and offered to go in and buy the coffee for the one looking for the space. When the first woman offered to pay for the coffee, the good Samaritan refused the money and said she had terminal cancer and she just wanted to do a few good deeds for others in the time she had left.

“Ten American soldiers got up to pay their bill at a restaurant in Chicago only to find the bill had been paid by an anonymous diner who left a note that said, “Thank you for your service.”

“In Boston earlier this winter, a man arriving from Florida from a train trip to a lot where his car was parked found the vehicle buried under a mountain of snow pushed there by a plow. With no shovel, the man began to move the snow the best he could with his bare hands until a stranger driving by stopped and shoveled the snow away from the car.

“A couple on a backpacking vacation day in Hawaii returned to their car and found it had been vandalized. Their wallets, clothes and plane tickets were stolen. They contacted a policewoman, who filed a report and then invited the couple into her home for dinner and an overnight stay. The following morning, the woman took the couple to a loan company so they could pay for their trip back home.

“A young woman in Georgia, after discovering that her kidney was a perfect match to a 35-year-old Ohio man who had been waiting five years for a donor, had the surgery to give her kidney to save the man’s life just because she simply wanted to pay it forward.

“A Vietnam Marine veteran from Massachusetts became homeless after his low income rented apartment was sold. While he struggled to survive in the streets and was sleeping in his car, what he claimed got him through the lowest levels of his life was his love for music. He had an electronic keyboard placed in a storage unit while he was homeless and the owner of the storage company let him play his beautiful music every night there. Following an accident that totaled his car, he had no place to spend his nights. He moved temporally into his friend’s house, but when a local VA office had heard about his plight, they came to him and said, ‘No veteran should ever have to sleep in his car.’ They moved him into a homeless shelter in Maine, where he has been entertaining local residents with his electronic keyboard.

“In Wisconsin, a nonprofit organization called ‘Sure We Can’ collects recyclable aluminum cans from people living in poor neighborhoods and in return pays their customers cash they need to help them live a little better along with their minimum wage jobs.

“And finally, tonight, we bring you Thistle Farms, a place of sanctuary for women survivors of human trafficking. What they do there is help these women reclaim their lives by offering therapy and love.

“Becca Stevens, the founder of Thistle Farms said, ‘You can rape women, you can make them refugees, you can get them addicted as a child. You can jail them. You can prostitute them. You can beat the hell out of them. But you can’t kill hope in them.’

“And this is the news for Saturday, March 29, 2025. Have a good day and remember, your acts of kindness today help us all become better people tomorrow.”

Email Rich Strack at richiesadie11@gmail.com