Warsaw native and former “The Bachelor” Ben Higgins speaks during Combined Community Services of Warsaw’s Love Thy Neighbor Luncheon at Christ’s Covenant Church in Winona Lake on Wednesday, Feb. 16. InkFreeNews photo by Leah Sander.

By Leah Sander
InkFreeNews

WINONA LAKE — Ben Higgins has battled loneliness.

As a result, he had to learn to find his worth, which is what he encouraged others to do in their own lives at a Winona Lake event on Wednesday, Feb. 16.

The Warsaw native was the keynote speaker at Combined Community Services’ Love Thy Neighbor Luncheon at Christ’s Covenant Church. The event raised funds for the Warsaw social services organization, which provides food and clothing to those in need as well as self-sufficiency programs.

Higgins, who gained notoriety in an appearance on “The Bachelorette” before being chosen as “The Bachelor” for its 20th season, asked those at the luncheon to remember that they “have value.” He didn’t stop there though, asking people to in turn help others.

“I don’t know of any place in the world that could do more for these situations that I’m speaking about today than Kosciusko County and I mean that,” he said. “I’ve learned to look left and right and to ask people ‘What do you need?’ and ‘How can I help?’ because of you all, because of the impact that you’ve had, because of the legacy that you’ve left and if there’s one thing I can pass off today, it’s that you have value.”

“You might doubt it. You might question it; we all do,” he continued. “You have breath; you have life. You’re going to leave this room and maybe totally forget about everything I say today, but if there’s one thing, one thing I ask you to remember is that you have value. That this life is so short and many of us in this room now have life experiences that we can point to and say, ‘Now that’s very true.’ And so with the time that we have with the gift that God has been giving us, let’s look left and right, let’s ask people what they need, let’s care about the outsider, let’s get to know the person that’s hurting the most, let’s ask ourselves who are we because I know from this seat and as I prepped for today that this room is full of people that are going to have and already have made a huge impact in this world.”

Higgins shared his struggle with feeling alone in his book “Alone in Plain Sight: Searching For Connection When You’re Seen But Not Known,” which he discussed Wednesday.

“I wrote a book on loneliness because myself – I have suffered deeply from feeling alone,” he said.

He talked about how he had a “breakdown” last year and returned to Warsaw for a while.

“I had to come back home, so I was feeling alone,” he said. “My values were in question, who I was was in question. I didn’t feel seen by anybody, yet I was couple months away from getting married (to now wife Jessica Clarke Higgins).”

Higgins said it wasn’t his relationship with his soon-to-be-wife that was the problem, noting that she loves him, but that he “was feeling disconnected from the world.”

“I had to ask myself in that moment: ‘Who are you still, Ben? What matters to you? Who do you want to be? How do you want to be remembered?'” he said.

“And the thing that stood out to me in that moment was I want to be remembered as somebody that gave more than I took. If nothing else is said about me for the rest of my life, I just want to be known as somebody that gives more than I take from this world and again I learned that from this community,” he continued.

“There’s something interesting when you start to serve others, when you start to look left and right at other people’s needs and you stop focusing solely on your own, but you start to say, ‘Hey, how can I help you?’ Because the joy to that, I believe it comes from God,” he said.

Giving back locally

One of the ways Higgins is working on giving back is through the company he co-founded, Generous Coffee.

According to its website, the company “invest(s) 100% of (its) profits from coffee and apparel into life-changing partner organizations that create jobs, feed children, improve education, and empower communities to eliminate poverty.”

Higgins told media outlets after his talk that the company has moved its operations to Warsaw. Roasting is now taking place at 123 S. Buffalo St.

“We moved it to Warsaw for a reason because I want it to have roots and to grow and I believe this community will support it. I believe it’s the place to start from,” he said.

“I really want Generous to thrive in Warsaw,” he said. “I mean that. That is a focus of mine … I believe that this idea of a for-profit company doing 100% of the profits makes no sense and there’s a reason for that because I want to be out there advocating and educating people on the benefits of for-profit business. I want people to see capitalism as this utility and this tool to do some great stuff in the world. And so I really want to see this community support it and lift it up and then spread it out across the world.”