His name is Callum. He is a Labrador. He is brown. He has a little white developing around his snout. All the best dogs have white on their snouts.

Callum is blind.

He was found walking along the backwater highways of rural Alabama, lost, staggering headfirst into obstacles.

Imagine being completely blind and being a stray.

You are alone in a midnight-black world. You are nameless. You are unwanted. You are nothing. No—you are lower than nothing. You are trash. You have no value on this earth. At least that’s how you feel.

You stumble along, trying to feel your way through life. You wander through dangerous intersections, avoiding speeding vehicles. It’s a wonder you aren’t already dead.

You walk facefirst into guardrails on highway shoulders. You search for food and water and shelter wherever you can find it, but rarely find anything more than a discarded McDonald’s wrapper.

You sleep wherever. Anywhere will do. Anywhere warm. Anywhere safe. Anywhere you can eke out another day.

That was Callum’s life. He was starving to death, of course. What

he needed was nutrition. Hydration. Calories. Fat. Sodium. What he needed was love.

When they found him, love was what he was most deficient of. He was emaciated. The gaps between his ribs showed. He could barely stand up. You could see the joints of his bones.

Moreover, he had the hangdog demeanor most strays have. I have a blind stray. I remember when I first met her. Don’t ask me how I knew this, but I could just tell that she had the knowledge that someone thought she was better off dead.

Nevertheless, none of Callum’s previous life matters. Not anymore. What matters now is that he’s not suffering.

A New Leash on Life program, in Huntsville, has been helping him get back on his feet. He’s been in a foster home for months. A place where people love him. A…

Lately, I’m receiving more negative emails than ever before. I don’t know what’s in the drinking water, but something has shifted.

I need guidance on how to respond to these angry emailers. So, I turn to my dog, Marigold. Marigold is the most non-judgemental soul I know. I read emails aloud to her, then base my responses on her reactions.

“You’re a [bleeping] coward,” one emailer writes. “By not taking a political stance you have, in effect, taken a stance… Innocents are dying because of you.”

Marigold licked herself.

“I’m done reading you,” another writes, “you talk too much about politics.”

I turned to Marigold for an answer. She was now licking her private parts.

“There is only one way to heaven, Sean…” wrote the angry emailer. “You waste your talent for Satan… If you don’t ask Jesus into your heart and make a public profession of faith, I’m sorry, but you are a fraud.”

I looked to Marigold once again. Marigold was now emitting smells, some powerful enough to knock a buzzard off a honey wagon.

Another emailer: “...I can’t stand your drivel… Every

time I see one of your stories I delete it, but my dad keeps sending them to me… I’m about to block you for good.”

Marigold sighed. And as I stroked my dog’s head, I heard another soft noise discharged from her backside.

“WHY HAVEN’T YOU WRITTEN ABOUT CHARLIE KIRK? YOU ARE A LIAR AND A [BLEEPING] FAKE!!!!!!!!!”

Nine exclamation points.

Marigold put her head into my lap.

“I’m sorry, Sean, but I just expected more from you…”

Marigold was falling asleep. She was lightly snoring.

Another email: “You talk way too often about spiritual things you don’t understand… I thought you were supposed to be a humor writer…”

And the next emailer: “Sean… I keep wishing you’d tell less jokes and talk more about spiritual things…”

Marigold was now dreaming. At least that’s what…

I think of the Camino often.

Every day, actually. The Camino sort of lives inside me. Wherever I go. Whatever I do. I think about it.

I remember who I was as I walked the ancient trail. I remember those 40 days. Living out of a backpack. Hardly any possessions. Two T-shirts. One pair of boots. I had a fiddle on my back.

I remember the camaraderie along the way. I remember how we made friends with fellow pilgrims. Deep friendships. Pilgrims from every nation. We could not speak each other’s languages, but it didn’t matter. Love is its own language.

Whenever we were together—all us pilgrims—there existed no Americans, no Russians, no Jews, no Muslims, no nationalities between us. No Black, no white, no political persuasion. We were just people.

People with basic needs. Who needed water, shoes, good sleep, and a secluded place to pee.

And, of course, we had to eat. Which wasn’t always easy.

There was the time we were all miles from the nearest village, without enough food. So

we all pooled our lunches together, sitting beneath an old oak tree.

A man from Switzerland brought a bottle of wine. A woman from Brazil had a loaf of bread. A guy from Italy had anchovies. We passed around the fish and loaves, and gave thanks. We ate all we wanted. There was enough leftovers to fill 12 backpacks.

There was the blind man I met on the trail. Walking toward the nearest village. Shuffling along on a highway, and yet, pausing to give me—me, a Big Dumb American—some encouraging words.

There was the time I was injured, when my wife and I parted ways on the trail. I compelled her to leave me, to find her own Camino. To find her own truth out there. I would follow her by cab.

I cried as she walked away. Because I wished her so much joy. So…

Dear Young Me, I am sending this letter back in time. I hope you get it. Tell everyone I said hello. Brush your teeth.

The main reason I’m writing is because the world is going to go nuts someday. And I mean totally, flipping nuts. I can’t even describe the level of nuttiness you’re about to experience.

But believe me, someday you will wake up and the current state of the world, and all its wacky human inhabitants will suddenly seem so screwed-up, you will feel like a giraffe.

This will be especially evident in the young generations that follow yours.

Certainly, young people have always differed from their elders, but with the current techno boom we are undergoing, young people will become a different species.

In generations past, the highest form of technology was the walkie-talkie radio in the handle-bar basket of your Schwinn. You bought this radio at the five-and-dime using a wad of crumpled cash from your piggy bank.

But

in the future, there won’t BE piggy banks. There won’t be five-and-dimes. And there definitely won’t be many Schwinns.

Likewise, at one time, the highest aspiration of kidhood was merely to build a really cool fort. But there aren’t many forts being built today.

There was a recent study done. Researchers found that Americans of previous generations played outside often. In fact, a staggering 90 percent of American kids used to play outside. Today, the percentage falls somewhere around 20 percent.

Yesterday, for example, I was on a walk when I passed a group of kids, sitting on their porch. Each kid held his or her respective iPad, playing some kind of game; each kid was simultaneously texting on a secondary mobile device; each child wore massive, noise-cancelling, reality-blocking, soul-crushing headphones clamped tightly on his or her head.

And this is normal.

Young Me, they were…

A little girl rescued a turtle from a busy highway.

This happened yesterday afternoon.

Moving a turtle is not a remarkable sight, really. It happens every day, somewhere in the world. Somewhere in the known universe, a rural kid moves a turtle off the highway. I have been that kid myself. Many times. Maybe you have too.

Yesterday, however, the unique privilege went to a little girl. She was maybe 12.

I saw her in the middle of the highway. She was flagging down traffic in both lanes.

It was a rural two-lane. In the wilds of central Alabama. Lots of mobile homes. Lots of pastures with cows. Lots of American flags on home-built trailer porches.

The child was standing in the middle of the highway, halting cars in both lanes, like a professional commercial air traffic controller.

Traffic halted at her cues. A string of vehicles was soon backing up toward the horizon—vehicles traveling both directions. The impromptu traffic jam was growing, too, accumulating more vehicles every few moments.

Among our friendly little gridlock,

there were two log trucks, a few dump trucks, and cars of every size, shape, and partisanship preference. All stalled by the singular hand signal of a child.

The girl was oblivious to the danger that surrounded her. People die every day on those old highways. She was blissfully unconcerned.

The turtle was not a small creature. It was about the size of watermelon. She had to lift with both hands.

But first, she had to gain its trust inasmuch as the turtle was hissing at her. It had huge claws that could have severed an average human limb.

Several of us gathered around the girl to watch. She looked like a tough kid. A country girl. Like this wasn’t her first tortoise rodeo.

It took a few moments for the girl to win the turtle’s good faith enough that it let her pick it…

I have an important question. How would you spend your best day ever?

This might sound like a dumb question. But if you have time, take a brief break from doom scrolling and think about your best day ever (BDE).

What would you do on this particular day? Where would you go? What would you wear? And most importantly, what would you eat?

Don’t laugh. Food is sacred. Is there a gift more precious than the taste of real, wholesome food? Is there any joy more humanly gratifying than unrefined flavors of fat, salt, and sugar?

You could be the richest, most powerful sultan on Planet Earth, with entire nations under your control, a harem of lovers who all look like professional underwear models, and a giant trampoline in your living room. But if you had no tastebuds, if everything you ate tasted like No. 9 Styrofoam… Your whole life would suck.

Who would be with you on your BDE? Why would you choose this person? Would it even BE a person? Or would

it be a canine? Feline? Ferret? Goldfish? Rare form of exotic algae?

If it WERE a human you chose, however, why them? How does this person make you feel? Do you love them? Where do those feelings come from? Have you ever wondered about this?

You cannot necessarily “choose” your feelings about a person. You simply feel how you feel. You either feel one way or you don’t. It’s a decision your soul makes, not your brain.

Ah, the soul.

There’s that word. A dangerous word, so laced with divisive religious overtones that people dare not talk about it. Thus, society just ignores the issue of a soul altogether.

But you cannot ignore your soul. It’s the true You.

Which is why there are some humans in this life who give your soul an overwhelming sense of unconditional love, joy, and kinship. Whereas others give your…