True story this: When I was a little kid, we lived in the city (THE city), and my Auntie Betty, the person second only to Jesus Christ himself for a good and kind heart in the history of this planet, used to take us on the bus from Staten Island to Queens or Manhattan, or from her apartment in Queens to Manhattan, all over. We were quite the little bus riders back in the day. And I used to get upset as a kid of about 7 when I saw the old people on the bus, and Auntie Betty wanted to know why, and I was sad because the old people on the bus were going to die soon, and that just broke my heart.

And to this day, my mother has my schoolwork from when I was a little kid, and for current events I used to being in obituaries. My mother has notebook pages with obituaries taped to them and scrawled first-grade pencil descriptions about the person who died. I distinctly remember one that said, “This man made hats.”

Some people are just born melancholy and morbid. If you work with me, you know I can turn a normal conversation into one about my neighbor being run down by a bus and leaving behind a whole house of foster dogs and then walk away leaving some group of formerly cheery individuals searching for a funny anecdote.

Nature, nurture, hello; my sister is not like this.

So, when you are attuned to all the negative in the world (I had to stop watching political shows and one night watched a documentary about Diane Schuler, who drive her car the wrong way on the Taconic Parkway in NY state, killing many; this is what makes me feel better than CNN), when the positive comes along, you should celebrate it.

So, my son recently went on vacation to Beirut. Here is why. He is going out with a young woman who pursued Middle Eastern Studies in college and who speaks Arabic. She is on an internship with the United Nations and working with Palestinian refugees in Lebanon. They are mostly women and children, and this work is not going to make her rich. But it is what her life’s purpose is: helping poor people who have been displaced and have no homes and are struggling.

So, the Mueller report won’t save us and Jeff Bezos should be helping these people, but is not, and Warren Buffett, it turns out, is big in ripping off people who are trapped living in mobile homes they have paid for on land that is not theirs so they have to pay whatever lot rate is thrown at them.

But, there is Amy. And others like her. And I can get up in the morning knowing this, even if riding the train to New York makes me sad for the old people.