I’ll confess! I have an extreme case of FOMO – fear of missing out. Sometimes this gets me into trouble and I won’t bore you with those details. I’d rather focus on a time my FOMO paid off.

Recently I heard an interesting lecture by the author John Green in the late afternoon. My brain was full of stimulating ideas. Any sane person would have gone home and savored that experience. Instead, I rushed home, grabbed something to eat and headed back out to a local bookstore to attend a “Hear Our Stories” event. These events feature people who have been incarcerated for various reasons. They share their stories about life before, during, and after incarceration. I didn’t want to miss out! 

If you want to hear stories of transformation, these events are for you. Sometimes the transformative moment is finding God, but others are transformed by serving another human being or finding friendship within a circle of former inmates as they open their hearts in a safe space. These stories shatter every stereotype I might have held about people who have served time for committing violent crimes.



One of the storytellers that evening was a former drug dealer, Montez Day, who began to sell drugs at the age of 12 and worked his way up to armed robbery until his incarceration in the Federal Prison in Terre Haute. At this event I heard how Montez volunteered to teach a fellow inmate to read so that the inmate wouldn’t lose his prison job. Montez and the inmate met in the prison library twice a week for 6 months. The inmate’s life was forever changed because he learned to read and kept his prison job. More importantly, Montez found purpose in his life. He said that he had been angry and lost ever since he was 12 years old and could never figure out why he was alive. Being of service to another human being and using teaching skills he didn’t even know he had set him on a path as an educator and leader. Now he works for a large not-for-profit as a workshop facilitator. What a transformation!

I don’t want to miss out on these opportunities to hear stories of transformation and hope. I need them to balance the invitations that are readily available every day to become despairing and cynical. This time my FOMO paid off. I’m not encouraging you to take up the FOMO practice but I am encouraging you to look for stories of transformation and hope. Then share those stories with anyone who will listen. 

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* The Garden supports “Hear Our Stories” but the heavy lifting of coaching the storytellers and finding the venues is done by Storytelling Arts of Indiana. You can see a picture of Montez Day on Storytelling Arts of Indiana's Home page – www.storytellingarts.org