Hero of the Day: Milana Vayntrub

milana-vayntrub-lily-2016I’ve had this article sitting in my “list o’ blog entries” for a while, simply because I haven’t known how to add anything more interesting than the original article. But it’s sat there too long, and I figure I’ll just go ahead and mention it to you, just because it deserves mentioning.

Milana Vayntrub, whom you might recognize  from AT&T commercials, was nearing the end a vacation in Greece last year when she decided to cancel her flight home. It was at the height of the Syrian refugee crisis, which she hadn’t anticipated when she planned the vacation.

In a video she filmed a few hours after her canceled flight, she says, “I’m getting on a plane to fly to the island of Lesbos, which is really in need of resources and volunteers…. I don’t really know what I’m going to do, but I can’t do nothing. I don’t want to be a passive citizen anymore. I want to be a force for good.”

The video isn’t political, nor is she trying to make a statement. She’s just a regular person (albeit one with 103k Twitter followers) who decided to spend the end of her vacation doing something very un-vacationy: Helping people.

I think that’s awesome.

I’ve taken plenty of vacations in my day. I’ve traveled to Australia, France, Puerto Rico, Hawaii, England/Wales, Mexico, and Arkansas. I’ve soaked in the sun on the beach in North Carolina, and I’ve read books to my niece in Virginia at Christmas.

But I’ve never spent a minute of that time actually helping people. Especially people who were as much in need as the Syrian refugees in Lesbos.

As for what I’ll do with this information in my life, I’m not sure. But I just wanted to commend Vayntrub for doing something that probably wouldn’t even occur to the majority of people during their vacation (including me). And it’s neat that she shared the story on her platform to inspire others to be a force for good.

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