Day 93 ❦ Help Someone Grow a Dream
The Gift: A Dream
I have shared many stories about my upbringing, which in many ways was a gift in and of itself. In our house we now say “Happiness does not build character” and so my upbringing helped build me into the character I am presently. I have written many stories thanking the people who were so negligent and harmful in my life for teaching me about resilience and the power of digging deep and believing in myself and they are not gratuitous, I really mean it - I am the person, the character, I am today because of the lessons I learned in life.
I also learned that life is about choices and options, and although I learned that a little later in life, I think that is one of the best take-aways from my childhood. I have choices. I can choose to be a good person, I can choose to have a positive outlook on life, I can choose to smile and get through anything. My attitude is a choice, my behavior is a choice, my actions are choices. Options came even later and the story about this gift was one of the first time I realized I had options.
In the book “Bridging the Class Divide”, author Linda Stout shares that children who grow up in marginalized households do not learn about options until later in life. In my experience, options is a word that can be interchanged with dreams. In my childhood, my dreams were simple and usually involved survival and coping strategies but as I became exposed to other people’s dreams - I realized that those could certainly be options for me and traveling vicariously became one of my favorite escapes. Hearing from my Grandfather or my Uncle about their latest trips always got me excited to think about visiting and traveling and experiencing the world. I loved looking at all of their slides over and over again. They helped me begin to learn about options and dreaming.
This was fully realized on the day that I turned eighteen and I stopped over at my Grandparents house to say hi. I am sure I was hoping for a birthday gift, but I had lived with them fora while so it was not unusual for me to stop by. I will never forget this day - Grandpa was sitting at the kitchen table and Grandma was by the stove cooking something (as usual) and Grandpa handed me an envelope...oh goodie...a gift indeed! Before I had a chance to open it, I was sworn to secrecy - I couldn't tell my Mother what was in the envelope, because Grandpa said it would make her mad. Even better! A gift AND one that would make my Mom mad! And then as I started to open the envelope, my Grandpa made me make one more promise...I had to spend it all - I could not save the gift. Now that was a little harder to promise because I was getting ready to put myself through college and was trying to save every penny...but I promised.
As I open the card five $100 bills fell into my hand. $500. In 1976 $500 was a fortune and would pay for an entire semester at college. I was in shock. After huge hugs were exchanged and I caught my breathe my Grandfather then said to me, “you can do anything you want, you will be able to go anywhere you want to go, where are you going to go with this money?”And the dreaming began. I had options, and probably more importantly, I had someone who told me I had options, someone who believed that I could go anywhere, do anything, be anyone. While the $500 was a huge gift - the real gift came in those words...my Grandpa believed in me. In me. In ME! Wow.
So how does this fit the 100 Days of Giving Exercise? On this day, I had a chance to pass this same dream on to our nephew, in much the same way, and with much the same impact. How simple is it to say to someone - “I believe in YOU”. Go out and give someone that gift and just see what happens - it is magical and will have life-long impact.
❦ Plant a Seed and Help Someone Grow a Dream
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