Booker illustrated this truth with a story from an airplane flight. Fifteen years earlier, he sat next to a woman with a screaming baby, decided to turn potential misery into connection, and spent the flight playing tic-tac-toe and telling bad jokes. They exchanged addresses but lost touch. Then, on the lowest day of his mayoral campaign — a campaign he was losing spectacularly — a letter arrived from that same woman, telling him the kindness he had shown her still lived with her. She offered support, and her toddler, now grown, became a campaign volunteer.