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1. It's been nearly a year since an American couple was stabbed to death in Tajikistan in an attack claimed by ISIS. Since then, I've gone to Tajikistan twice to piece together what happened in an investigation for #TheWeeklyNYT that premieres Sunday: nytimes.com/2019/06/21/the…
2. I cover ISIS full-time for @nytimes and the unrelenting pace of attacks has meant that I spend my days covering the organization, with little time left over to focus on its victims. Today I want to tell you why the story of Jay Austin & Lauren Geoghegan stopped me in my tracks 
3. Jay and Lauren, both 29, had high-paying jobs in Washington, he for HUD and she as a Georgetown admissions officer. But they longed for something more. A day after they were killed, I found their blog. They had quit their jobs to cycle around the world: simplycycling.org
4. I began reading their words & couldn't help but be moved by the values they articulated. Then I began to speak to their friends and family. Jay earned a six-figure salary, but was turned off by the materialistic life he saw around him. He began giving his money away to charity
5. Under his email signature at HUD where most people wrote their title, Jay wrote "real human being." He could've afforded a mortgage on a fancy house. Instead, he built himself a tiny off-grid house. He then held tutorials to show others how to build one & live more simply.
6. Jay began taking extended unpaid leaves from his job to travel, pushing the bounds of what his employer would allow. He told HUD that it was up to them if they wanted to take him back. They always did, according to his sister:
7 Each time he came back he was bothered by how his life became a rat race. He developed a philosophy of "Everyday Happiness" which he wanted to live for. "The kind where we embrace Mondays as an amazing fucking day ..To live for Saturday/Sunday is to live for 2/7 of one's life."
8. Along with his partner Lauren, he began hatching a grand project: They would quit their jobs and bike around the world. Their goal was not to break any records. Nor were they adrenaline-junkies. Their goal was to live every day in the moment:
9. Jay's vision: "This is one person's feeble attempt to live a life so absolutely free that my very existence is an act of rebellion. It's an attempt to carry myself & a tent and a stove across the world & to rely on the kindness of others and to provide kindness to others ...
10. ...to travel not as a means, but as an end. To test this hypothesis of happiness in simplicity, to tie together everything I've learned within and between each adventure of my scattered, searching little life."
11. Jay and Lauren set off at the southern tip of Africa, cycled up the spine of the continent to Morocco, then biked across all of Europe. The worldview that they tested and articulated along the way is that if you open your heart to the world, the world will open itself to you.
12. For 99% of their journey, that philosophy proved true. On Day 319, a Kazakh man stopped his truck & offered them ice cream. On Day 342, a family came to their campsite with stringed instruments and serenaded them. On Day 359, pigtailed girls offered them a bouquet of flowers:
13. Throughout their trip, they blogged about the immense generosity and the sheer goodness of people. As I began researching their lives, it occurred to me that their philosophy was in essence the direct opposite of ISIS. And it was on Day 369 that these two worldview collided.
14. After I wrote about Jay & Lauren last year, readers blamed them for their own deaths, claiming they'd been reckless by going to Tajikistan. Fact: Before their death, the State Department had ranked Tajikistan a Level 1, safer than France which is Level 2:
15. Lauren's mother had voiced concern as they were preparing to leave Europe headed to Tajikistan. So Lauren said, "Mom, lets look up what the State Department says." They looked it up and found that our own government advised travelers to simply: "Exercise normal precautions."
16. Having spent time in Tajikistan researching the attack, I can say that its people are among the most hospitable I've encountered. Everywhere @singeli & @tadashi_lives went, Tajiks apologized for what had happened as if they were personally responsible. The memorial they built
17. In Lauren’s memory, two scholarships have been set up, one at Georgetown where she was a student & later an admissions officer, and one at her high school. (Please use the fund code written on the card below for the Georgetown grant so that it is directed to the right place).
18. Their deaths came at the hands of ISIS in an attack officials described as merely “inspired” by the group. In Tajikistan, we learned that it was far more than that. Join me tomorrow night at 10 pm on @FXNetworks. nytimes.com/2019/06/21/the…
