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A safe, stable home can change lives for the better. Here’s how Habitat for Humanity wants to make that possible for everyone.
Better health, better jobs, and a brighter future all start with access to a safe, affordable home.
A single door can open up a world of endless possibilities. For homeowners, the front door of their house is a gateway to financial stability, job security, and better health. Yet for many, that door remains closed. Due to the rising costs of housing, 1 in 3 people around the world wake up without the security of safe, affordable housing.
Since 1976, Habitat for Humanity has made it their mission to unlock and open the door to opportunity for families everywhere, and their efforts have paid off in a big way. Through their work over the past 50 years, more than 65 million people have gained access to new or improved housing, and the movement continues to gain momentum. Since 2011 alone, Habitat for Humanity has expanded access to affordable housing by a hundredfold.
A world where everyone has access to a decent home is becoming a reality, but there’s still much to do. As they celebrate 50 years of building, Habitat for Humanity is inviting people of all backgrounds and talents to be part of what comes next through Let’s Open the Door, a global campaign that builds on this momentum and encourages people everywhere to help expand access to safe, affordable housing for those who need it most. Here’s how the foundation to a better world starts with housing, and how everyone can pitch in to make it happen.
Volunteers raise a wall for the framework of a new home during the first day of building at Habitat for Humanity’s 2025 Carter Work Project. Globally, almost 3 billion people, including 1 in 6 U.S. families, struggle with high costs and other challenges related to housing. A crisis in itself, this also creates larger problems that affect families and communities in unexpected ways. People who lack affordable, stable housing are also more likely to experience financial hardship in other areas of their lives, since a larger share of their income often goes toward rent, utilities, and frequent moves. They are also more likely to experience health problems due to chronic stress or environmental factors, such as mold. Housing insecurity also goes hand-in-hand with unstable employment, since people may need to move further from their jobs or switch jobs altogether to offset the cost of housing.
Affordable homeownership creates a stable foundation for families to thrive, reducing stress and increasing the likelihood for good health and stable employment. Habitat for Humanity builds and repairs homes with individual families, but it also strengthens entire communities as well. The MicroBuild® Initiative, for example, strengthens communities by increasing access to loans for low-income families seeking to build or repair their homes. Habitat ReStore locations provide affordable appliances and building materials to local communities, in addition to creating job and volunteer opportunities that support neighborhood growth.
Marsha and her son pose for a photo while building their future home with Southern Crescent Habitat for Humanity in Georgia. Everyone can play a part in the fight for housing equity and the pursuit of a better world. Over the past 50 years, Habitat for Humanity has become a leader in global housing thanks to an engaged network of volunteers—but you don’t need to be skilled with a hammer to make a meaningful impact. Building an equitable future means calling on a wide range of people and talents.
Here’s how you can get involved in the global housing movement:- Speaking up on social media about the growing housing crisis
- Volunteering on a Habitat for Humanity build in your local community
- Travel and build with Habitat in the U.S. or in one of 60+ countries where we work around the globe
- Join the Let’s Open the Door movement and, when you donate, you can create your own personalized door
- Shop or donate at your local Habitat ReStore
Every action, big and small, drives a global movement toward a better future. A safe home unlocks opportunity for families and communities alike, but it’s volunteers and other supporters, working together with a shared vision, who can open the door for everyone.
Visit habitat.org/open-door to learn more and get involved today.
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Woman with an unfortunate name has a hilarious warning for all parents-to-be
Her name is Samantha Hart. Her professional email address is the problem.
The recent trend of parents going out of their way to give their children unique names has brought up a lot of discussion on social media. Some of these names sound cute when a child is 5 years old. But will Caeleigh, Zoomer or Rhyedyr look like a serious adult on a job application in a few years?
A recent viral video on TikTok is a unique twist on the current discussion surrounding names. Samantha Hart has a name that doesn’t seem like it would draw any negative attention in professional circles. However, her parents didn’t consider email conventions when they named her back in the late ‘90s when email was new.
Her name was fine, but her email was not
“My name is Samantha Hart,” she said. “Most companies use the email designation of first initial, last name, meaning my email would be ‘shart.’” For the uninitiated, a “shart” is an unintentional release when one thinks they only have gas. Yikes.
The issue arose because Samantha has had two “professional” jobs in the past in which her name has been an issue. So, as she began a third job, she wondered how to approach the situation with a new employer.
“At every single workplace, I have received an email from HR the week before I start letting me know that my name does not exactly fit the company email structure as they would intend and [asked] would I mind if they gave me a different structure for my email,” Hart said.
So she asked her followers on TikTok if she should just “reach out, right off the bat” to her employer and ask for “something else” or wait for HR to react to her email situation. But most of the responses were from people who have been in the same embarrassing situation as Samantha and wished their parents had thought twice before naming them.
She was definitely not alone in this
“Clittmann has entered the chat. Have been dealing with this since college,” Chris.Littmann responded.
“As Swallo, I feel your pain,” Samantha Wallo replied.
“My name is Sue Hartlove so my work emails are always shartlove,” Sue added.
“I went to college w Tiffany Estes,” Abby1233213 wrote.
“Rkelley has entered the chat,” Rach commented.
“Worked with a guy named Sam Adcock,” Lori added.
“My last name is Hartstein, and my mom’s personal email is ‘shartstein.’ People literally call her shart-stein,” Lyss wrote.
“I used to work with a BAllsman,” JenniferKerastas added.
“I worked with a Patrick Ecker at a previous job…” NoName wrote.
“Our high school used last name, first two letters of first name. My friend’s email ended up being ‘mountme,’” Averageldeal commented.
Andy Marks won the comment section with: “Always best to initiate the shart convo… wait too long and it tends to come out at the least opportune moment.”
Woman types on her phone. Photo credit: Canva What the IT experts had to say
While the comments were dominated by people sharing their unfortunate email addresses, a few people in the IT field shared their advice for how Samantha should approach her new employer with her email issue. Most agreed that she should address the issue before it becomes a larger problem.
“As someone in IT—please reach out. When we have to rename a bunch of logins after someone starts it can cause headaches for everyone (inc you!),” Kelsey Lane wrote.
Expecting parents, please take notes.
As a postscript, Hart later told BuzzFeed that she was getting married and would be taking her new husband’s last name. “I actually will be sad when I change my last name,” she said. “It’s such an iconic thing, and it’s something that I’ve turned into a kind of lore for myself.”
This article originally appeared three years ago.
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She refused to ‘sacrifice’ her upgraded seat so a mom could sit next to her preteen kids
Here’s why parents applauded her for it.
If you’ve traveled on an airplane in the last several years, you know it’s much cheaper to choose the basic seats in the main cabin. There’s nothing inherently different about these particular seats, other than the fact that it will be randomly selected by the airline. If you’re traveling alone, that’s really not a bad deal, but if you’re traveling with a party that you’d like to keep together, like your children, the risk gets to be a little higher. One mom traveling with an 11 and 15-year old took the risk and banked on a stranger accommodating…that’s not quite how it played out.
Her seat was taken, on purpose
Tammy Nelson did a double take at her ticket after seeing the mom in her window seat. Of course, people accidentally sit in the wrong seats on planes all the time. However, Nelson quickly realized that this was no accident. This mom boarded the plane with her older children and had taken it upon herself to sit in the same row as her children, essentially commandeering a stranger’s seat. Nelson assumed it was a mistake and informed the woman that the seat was in fact hers but the response she received was surprising.
“She said, ‘Oh, you want to sit here?’,” Nelson told Good Morning America. “She said, ‘Oh, well I just thought I could switch with you because these are my kids.’”
That’s an interesting assumption considering seats are assigned and many people, like Nelson, pay extra to have the seat they prefer. Now, there’s no telling if funds were tight and this was an unplanned trip for the mom and kids which caused her to buy the more budget friendly tickets or if she was simply being frugal and was banking on the kindness of a stranger.
Either way, Nelson specifically paid for a window seat due to motion sickness and though she paid extra, she was willing to sit in the other row if that seat was also a window seat. But it turns out, it was a middle seat.
Surely there’s someone out there that loves the middle seat. Maybe a cold natured person that enjoys the body heat of two strangers sitting uncomfortably close. Or perhaps someone that doesn’t mind accidentally sleeping on an unsuspecting passenger’s shoulder. But that person wasn’t Nelson, so when the middle seat was offered in exchange for her bought and paid for window seat, she politely but firmly declined.
The internet had a lot to say
Her refusal to give in to the mom’s seemingly entitled request for Nelson’s seat has resulted in parents and child-free people cheering her on after she posted the details on her TikTok page, MyCONQUERing, which quickly racked over 3.4 million views.
“Nope. If it’s not an upgrade it’s a sacrifice,” a commenter wrote.
“You did the RIGHT thing. Folks need to plan their travel together. Lack of planning on their part does not constitute an inconvenience on yours,” one person said.
“I have 3 kids and have sat in different rows when they were passed toddler age. I agree, book your flight earlier,” another said.
“You were right. As a woman with 3 children, I always pay extra so we’re sat together,” another mom said.
This story actually changed things
Luckily, there’s been enough incidences like this to prompt actual change. More airlines are guaranteeing free family seating for parents with children under a certain age (not that that does much more the woman in this story, but still). The U.S. Department of Transportation proposed a rule under the Biden administration requiring airlines to provide fee-free family seating, but as of 2026 its future under the Trump administration remains uncertain. Five of the 10 largest airlines currently guarantee free family seating voluntarily.
This article originally appeared three years ago. It has since been updated.
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“You deserve better”: Mom leaves her husband after he refuses to clean up for 6 days straight
That’s the sound of women everywhere applauding.
Household inequity is getting better in some households. In others, it’s completely out of control. A viral TikTok video highlights an extreme version of inequality that many wives and mothers in heterosexual relationships face. However, the mom in this story hit her limit and won’t deal with it anymore. Lynalice Bandy, who goes by @5kids5catssomedogstoo on TikTok, posted a video that showed her home looking like a disaster after she worked six 10-hour days straight while her husband did nothing to help.
Her time-lapse video shows every room in the house completely trashed, with toys, food, and laundry scattered everywhere. “Shampoo on the carpets in the girls’ room, nail polish all over nugget covers, hair, and carpet. Scissors were used to cut hair, the down comforter, the mattress cover, and two nugget covers,” wrote the mom. “I’ve worked six, ten-hour days in a row with only one day off being a sick day,” she captioned the video. “I’d like to pretend I’m not the only person who cleans here, but as you can see…These rooms don’t get much attention when I’m not here.”
She says her husband’s excuse was that he was focused on doing his schoolwork and couldn’t pay attention to the kids. “Now, that school is out for a break, he doesn’t have that excuse anymore,” Bandy says, noting that all of his attention has been focused on “the four vehicles in our driveway that he wants to work on continuously.”
She packed up and didn’t look back
In a follow-up video, Bandy announced that she left her husband after the debacle.
The original video received over 17,000 comments, many of which were from supportive women. “You deserve much better, and he deserves to be alone. Much love to you from someone that left that life behind almost 20 yrs ago. You’ll get here, too,” Angela LaRoche wrote.
“Ma’am, you are nothing short of amazing! Hang in there!” Japanese with Jenny wrote. “That home is beautiful because of YOU,” Hillary added. “You put in so much work, and it is not unseen by me and so many others. But, you DO deserve better. Proud of you.”
Even though Bandy’s experience with her husband is an extreme case of a couple whose domestic duties are way out of balance, it points to a problem that plagues many households. Even though families are becoming more equal, women still do significantly more housework than men.
The numbers tell an even bigger story
A study utilizing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ American Time Use Survey found that women 15 years and older spend 5.7 hours daily doing housework and looking after kids and elders. Men in the same age group do an average of 3.6 hours of daily domestic work. That’s a 37% difference in time spent on household responsibilities.
Further, women who work an average of 35 hours a week spend 4.9 hours a day on household chores and child care, while men who work the same amount spend an average of 3.8 hours.
The comments show that many women are frustrated with their husbands for not doing their fair share. Hopefully, this video will encourage more people to speak out about domestic inequality and for more men to step up and do their part.
Here is where she is now
Nearly two years after Lynalice left her husband, she and her five children are living together in a new home. Her recent videos show that she’s having difficulty keeping it clean because she’s been working 60-plus hours a week and suffers from ADHD. Being the single mother of five has to be tough, so she has developed a new motto: “Progress, not perfection.” In November 2024, she shared a video of her and her family getting things together in their new home.
This article originally appeared three years ago. It has been updated.
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His mother gave him the ‘husbands in training’ course every parent should give their kids
This is exactly the kind of parenting more people wish they had received.
Even though the marriage rate in the United States is on a steep decline, chances are that the majority of kids growing up today will get married at some point in their lives. If current trends continue, roughly 40% of those marriages will end in divorce, according to current research.
Research published in the Couple and Family Psychology journal found that the top five reasons for divorce are a lack of commitment, infidelity, too much conflict, getting married young, and financial problems.
Wouldn’t it be great if we were taught from a young age how to be a good spouse so we could avoid these pitfalls? Many of them are totally solvable with good communication and commitment from both parties. But in American culture, most of us aren’t taught the specifics of how to have a happy and healthy marriage. Most of us tend to pick things up from watching the married people in our orbit, most likely our parents.
No comment on how that’s going.
The other way we learn is by making the mistakes ourselves. By then, it’s usually too late. And the data around second and third marriages isn’t very promising when you dig into it.
One mom decided to do something about it
Artist Doug Weaver had a much different upbringing. His mother, Mickey, made a curriculum for him and his two older brothers when they were kids to help them be great husbands when they got married.
You’ve heard of things like “Mom-Son Date Night” (some dads and daughters do it, too) where mothers will take their boys out on a “date” so they can learn basic chivalry and manners?
Weaver’s training was like that on steroids.
“When I was a kid, my mom did this thing for me and my two older brothers called ‘Husbands in Training,’” he explained in a TikTok video that has more than 5.9 million views. “It was a full, multiple-level curriculum on how to be a better husband.”
Weaver says the training covered topics from chivalry to eating to a rather uncomfortable discussion on “the ethics of the porn industry.” His mother also stressed the importance of listening to women and identifying when another man may be giving them trouble.
“There was a lot of really good stuff in that curriculum,” Doug said. “There were things like what to do if your spouse says something and the information they give is wrong. How to handle it if they say something wrong in public versus in private, when it is appropriate to correct them and when it isn’t.”
Weaver’s mother was also way ahead of her time because she made a big deal about teaching her sons the importance of consent. “We talked about consent, we talked about the basics of respecting and honoring women and listening to women, and all of the things that really just make you a decent human being,” Doug explained.
A young Doug must have absolutely hated sitting through conversations with his mom about porn, sex, and consent… but as a grown man, he looks back on the lessons fondly.
The curriculum was so good, dad enrolled too
The lessons were so powerful that even Weaver’s father decided to take the course. “A lot of the things that we were learning from my mom were things that he was never taught growing up,” Weaver said. “So, he decided he also wanted to take ‘Husbands in Training.’”
It brings to mind pre-marriage counseling or couples therapy. Programs are often offered (or mandated) through churches, so they aren’t usually a great fit for the non-religious. And couples without active “problems” may resist the idea of attending couples therapy due to the stubborn stigma around it.
The course officially ended when Weaver and his brothers got married. “My mom even made certificates of completion that she signed and gave to each of us on our wedding day,” he shared in his TikTok clip.
However, the video Weaver shared was so popular on TikTok that he’s making his mother’s course available to the general public. “After posting about ‘Husbands in Training’ on TikTok, the TT community really wants my mom to produce content about raising boys to be good men,” he wrote on a GoFundMe fundraising campaign in 2022.
Now the lessons are available to everyone
The overwhelming response to Weaver’s TikTok has inspired a YouTube channel to spread Mickey’s lessons far and wide. But it has also made a lot of people realize that teaching people how to be great spouses is a lifelong journey and should be a major part of child-rearing. Learning how to be a good spouse shouldn’t just be something we pick up by accident.
As for Doug Weaver, his training appears to be paying off in the form of a happy marriage. He has since said he plans to adapt the curriculum for his own children, with a particular focus on consent and healthy conflict resolution.
This article originally appeared four years ago. It has been updated.
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1981 Afterschool Special, ‘The Wave’, still holds up with its lessons about fascism
The chilling story was based on a real high school experiment.
“What are you watching?” my 13-year-old son asked.
“An old Afterschool Special,” I responded.
“What’s an ‘Afterschool Special’?” he asked.
Hoo boy. Kids these days have no idea how different television was for those of us who grew up in the ’80s or how many core memories we have wrapped up in the ABC Afterschool Special.
I briefly explained and then he sat down to watch with me. It was 2022. A discussion about fascism on X had led me to look up “The Wave,” a 1981 ABC Afterschool Special based on a real-life high school experiment in Palo Alto, California, in 1967.
The real experiment was both fascinating and terrifying
In the real experiment, first-year history teacher Ron Jones had students at Cubberley High School engage in a simulation of how fascism spreads as part of a lesson on World War II, with him playing the role of the dictator. His intent was to show skeptical students how the Nazis came to power by creating a social movement he dubbed the Third Wave.
“It started out as a fun game with the most popular teacher at school,” Mark Hancock, one of the students in Jones’ history homeroom class, told Palo Alto Online in 2017. “He told us, ‘If you’re an active participant, I’ll give you an A; if you just go along with it, I’ll give you a C; if you try a revolution, I’ll give you an F, but if your revolution succeeds, I’ll give you an A.’”
Hancock said he started off planning to get that revolution A, but it quickly grew beyond grades and turned into something real. “At the end, I was scared to death,” he shared.
It began with Jones rallying the students around the idea of “strength through discipline” and “strength through community.” He had them engage in regimented behaviors and handed out membership cards. At first, it was just fun, but students began to enjoy feeling like part of a special community. Jones pushed the importance of following the rules. The students even formed a “secret police” to monitor other students, and if someone broke a Third Wave rule, they’d be reported and publicly “tried” by the class.
The students got wrapped up in it to a frightening degree and even Jones found himself enjoying the way the students responded to him. “It was pretty intoxicating,” he told Palo Alto Online.
But according to Verde Magazine, Jones felt like he’d lost control of it by the fourth day.
The experiment ended at the end of the week with a rally. Jones told the students they were actually part of a real national Third Wave movement and that the national leader was going to speak to them at the rally. Jones turned on the televisions to white static and watched the students eagerly wait for their leader to speak. That’s when he broke the news to them that they’d fallen for a totalitarian regime. Instead of a Third Wave leader speech, he played them a video of a Nazi rally.
According to a school newspaper at the time, most students were disillusioned. But one student said, “It was probably the most interesting unit I’ve had. It was successful in its goal to achieve the emotions of the Germans under the Nazi regime.”
What the 1981 film gets right
“The Wave” follows the true story quite closely and still holds valuable lessons. One chilling scene shows a kid who had been sort of an outcast prior to the “movement” saying, “For the first time, I feel like I’m a part of something great.” He was particularly crushed to find out it was all a fascist facade.
As is the cyclical nature of history, “The Wave” and what it can teach us is especially relevant today. According to NPR, “surveys of more than 500 political scientists find that the vast majority think the United States is moving swiftly from liberal democracy toward some form of authoritarianism.” The benchmark survey, known as Bright Line Watch, had “U.S.-based professors rate the performance of American democracy from zero (dictatorship) to 100 (perfect democracy),” noted NPR. After President Trump’s election in November 2024, scholars gave American democracy a rating of 67. By April 2025, that figure had dropped to 53, and public ratings fell below 50 for the first time since Bright Line Watch began collecting data in 2018.
Why this story feels so timely right now
The most recent Bright Line Watch surveys from early 2026 show expert ratings have stabilized around 57, still the lowest recorded since the project began.
John Carey, co-director of Bright Line Watch and a professor of government at Dartmouth, summed up the matter by saying, “We’re moving in the wrong direction.”
Since President Trump’s election in November, various publications worldwide have suggested that much of Trump’s rhetoric echoes that of Nazi Germany, with some pointing out parallels between each administration’s first 100 days in office. Other publications have criticized the comparison.
At any rate, this afterschool special is incredibly timely. If you can get past the ’80s aesthetic, it’s worth watching. Even my teen kids got into it, once they stopped making fun of the hair and film quality.
This article originally appeared four years ago. It has been updated.
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Anne Hathaway shares the ‘unintended consequence’ of her iconic ‘Princess Diaries’ makeover
One of the film’s most memorable moments came with a “terrible side effect.”
It’s a trope as old as time: the charming, yet conventionally unattractive girl gets a makeover, and suddenly her looks match her winning personality, opening an entire world of possibilities…and love interests.
And how do we know she’s conventionally unattractive? Glasses (because attractive people don’t read and can see perfectly, duh) and unkempt curly hair.
In pop culture, almost nothing instantly clocks a woman as less desirable or polished. At best, they can be the carefree bohemian or funny best friend. But you can bet you bottom dollar that if they are to be seen as a romantic love interest in any way, shape, or form, that hair is gonna be flat-ironed within an inch of its life. It’s screenwriting 101, people.
An era-defining transformation
One lasting example of this is the makeover scene in The Princess Diaries, wherein Mia Thermopolis (played by Anne Hathaway) goes from adorkable to refined thanks to a bit of hair straightening, plus some makeup, contacts, and intense eyebrow tweezing.
In a recent interview with People, Hathaway shared that the filmmaker never actually intended to promote the “curly = ugly” stereotype. It was actually just a logistical strategy.
“My natural hair is rather straight, so we had to create a contrast,” she shared, adding that going with her naturally straight hair meant “less time in the makeup trailer” overall.
…with “unintended consequences”
As a result, however, the message many audiences read was “curly hair is unattractive,” which Hathaway labeled as a “terrible, completely unintended side effect.”
If the comments section was any indicator, Hathaway was correct in saying the “unintended consequence” of that scene was the profound effect it left with viewers.
“I (a curly haired girly) started straightening my hair after I saw the scene at 12.”
“Yeah, watching this movie when it came out as someone who had curly hair and glasses did something to me lol.”
“I had curly hair and glasses when this movie came out and was bullied for both. I was in middle school and to this day I can’t watch this movie because it made me feel like the bullies were right. As an adult I know better but the gut feelings are still there.”
Granted, the creative decision might have been made in part for practical reasons, but let’s not forget that this movie came out in the early 2000s…a fairly rigid time period for beauty standards overall. The Princess Diaries was far from the only movie to portray curls (or glasses, or freckles, or anything past a size 2) as “ugly.” For all its good parts, the film was definitely a product of its time.
Straightening out the curl narrative
Thankfully, we’ve seen a lot of progress in this department. Not only do we see far more characters in media sporting their curls, but, thanks to social media, there’s a much larger wealth of knowledge for how to style and take care of curly hair.
Truly, there’s an entire language (I’m 2C to 3B type myself…iykyk) dedicated to curls now that simply did not exist at an earlier time. Not knowing that curls require an entirely different routine left many of us to resort to straightening or making peace with feeling like the ”ugly” one.
Even still, curls that aren’t styled and left in their Mia Thermopolis state are still often viewed by society as unprofessional, undesirable, or unclean in some way. That’s why representation matters. It’s so important to have our pop culture reflect a different reality so that we might start internalizing a different story and unlearning harmful stigma.
All this to say…Princess Diaries 3 should definitely let Mia’s curls go free. Just sayin’.
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After Spirit Airlines’ captain’s retirement flight was canceled, Southwest celebrated him with class
Pilot Jon Jackson’s scheduled final flight from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore was canceled when the airline ceased operations.
After 34 years of being America’s favorite budget airline (or most notorious, depending on who you ask), Spirit Airlines ceased operations at 3 a.m. on Saturday, May 2. The airline had been experiencing financial difficulties since the late 2010s, and after negotiations with the Trump Administration to secure a $500 million bailout stalled, it ceased operations.
“It is with great disappointment that Spirit Airlines has started winding down its global operations, effective immediately,” the airline said in a statement on May 2. “All flights have been canceled, and customer service is no longer available. While we are not able to help rebook your flight on another airline, we will automatically process refunds for any flights purchased through Spirit with a credit or debit card to the original form of payment.”
Captain Jon Jackson took the final flight of his career as a passenger
Spirit’s closure will result in 17,000 people who were directly or indirectly involved with the airline losing their jobs. Among them is Captain Jon Jackson, a pilot who was planning to retire after his scheduled final flight with the airline on May 2. However, the flight from Fort Lauderdale to Baltimore was canceled, so he instead flew to Baltimore on Spirit’s one-time competitor, Southwest Airlines. It must have been hard for Jackson, whose entire career led up to that final flight, where he would receive the ceremonial water cannon salute, to come up one leg short on his journey.
Jackson’s son, Chris, is a Southwest pilot, and he notified his coworkers that his father would be flying on the final leg of his career as a passenger on the airline.
“Chris casually mentioned to the flight’s Pilots that this would have been his dad’s retirement flight,” Southwest wrote on Facebook. “They seized the opportunity to change the course of the day for Capt. Jackson.”
So Southwest arranged an impromptu celebration at the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport. The airport’s Fire & Rescue team greeted the airplane upon arrival with a traditional water cannon salute. Upon exiting the flight and arriving at his gate, he was handed a bottle of champagne by the Southwest staff. “Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Jon Jackson!” a woman said over the loudspeaker at the gate, to a round of applause from employees and travelers alike.
Southwest’s gesture for the retiring captain was pure class
“This is overwhelming, I can’t thank you all enough, it’s, you know, as Spirit goes down, this is a sad day, and you guys made it incredible, so thank you so much,” Jackson said at the agate.
After decades of competition among airlines, Southwest’s show of respect for a fellow member of the aviation community demonstrates that the airline business is about much more than turning a profit.
“It was a powerful reminder of the aviation community’s ability to show respect, compassion, and solidarity when it matters most,” Southwest wrote on Facebook. “Above all, this moment was about honoring a fellow aviator. Congratulations, and thank you for your service in the skies, Capt. Jackson.”
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The one question Nietzsche believes everyone should ask themselves before getting married
Getting married is one of the biggest life-changing decisions most people have to make—and also one of the most stressful, according to the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory (also known as the Life Change Index Scale.) Even before getting engaged, much thought, time and care are required before exchanging vows. Deciding to commit your life to…
Getting married is one of the biggest life-changing decisions most people have to make—and also one of the most stressful, according to the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory (also known as the Life Change Index Scale.) Even before getting engaged, much thought, time and care are required before exchanging vows.
Deciding to commit your life to someone in marriage is something German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) spent a lot of time thinking about. He offered his wise thoughts on marriage to others during his life.
Nietzsche’s advice on whether someone should marry their partner comes down to one simple question. His advice is applicable to anyone debating getting engaged, newly married, or simply dating someone they might consider as a life partner. Nietzsche’s straightforward question can help people decide if one should walk confidently (or not) into marriage.
Friedrich Nietzsche’s important marriage question
Nietzche shared his wisdom with people wondering whether their partner is truly “the one.” He summed up his thoughts with this simple quote and question:
“[D]o you believe you are going to enjoy talking with this woman [or partner] up into your old age? Everything else in marriage is transitory, but most of the time you are together will be devoted to conversation.”
According to Nietzsche, the most important thing that will hold a marriage together is not attraction, money, or compatibility. It simply comes down to: do you enjoy talking to this person?
Response to Nietzsche’s marriage advice
Mark Manson, author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Mark Manson shared why he strongly believes the advice is the secret for a happy marriage on a recent episode of the Pursuit of Wonder podcast.
He shared, “My favorite quote that I’ve ever heard about marriage came from the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche.”
After reciting the quote, he explains why Nietzsche’s advice is so impactful:
“Looks come and go. Interests come and go. Finances come and go. Family problems come and go. But at the end of the day, can you spend the rest of your life in this conversation?” he says. “To me this is so profound because all the things that we care about when we’re young, when we meet somebody 99% of them will not matter anymore once we hit old age. Careers come and go. Money comes and goes. Families come and go. But if you can sustain that conversation through everything else, you can always have a great marriage.”
Nietzsche’s additional thoughts on marriage
Although Nietzsche never married, he wrote often about marriage and offered many theories on it meant to challenge and provoke thought. Nietzsche believed that friendship was paramount to a strong marriage as opposed to romance.
He wrote in Human, All Too Human (Aphorism 378), “The best friend will probably acquire the best wife, because a good marriage is founded on the talent for friendship.”
Nietzsche also wrote, “It is not a lack of love, but a lack of friendship that makes unhappy marriages.”
As researcher Skye Nettleton explains in her 2009 paper on Nietzsche and marriage, she notes the philosopher also wrote, “Sensuality often makes love grow too quickly, so that the root remains weak and is easy to pull out.”
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