Just maybe.....

I can’t change the sun, the moon or the stars.
They will always be there.

I can’t change the wind or the tides.
The wind will always blow; the tides will always rise and fall.

I can’t Influence great leaders or CEO’s of large corporations.
They will always do as they please with or without me.

If I don’t show up to work or if I get fired,
someone will take my place and soon I will be forgotten.

When I die, there will be no big fanfare or day of morning.
My life will end quietly and only the ones close to me will even know.

When I graduated from High School, I had big ambitions. I wanted to be an architect. I had dreams of building great things that people would associate with me and my name. I wanted to design something really beautiful or so magnificent that people seeing it would say “Wow the person that designed that was a genius”

I started going to college right after high school. I took Chemistry, Calculus, Physics, English and Creative Writing. At that time I loved to write and thought I was pretty good at it. Near the end of my first semester, all that changed. I had nearly a perfect grade in all my subjects with over a 98 average. My worst class though was the creative writing because the instructor and I didn’t see eye to eye on a lot of political issues.

The class was given an assignment to write our opinion on a subject and I worked long and hard on the project and turned it in with hopes of getting a good grade. The day after we turned in our papers, the instructor said he wanted to read a couple. I was excited that he chose to read mine first even though I was very shy at the time and a little nervous about what other people thought of my work. He never gave anyone else a chance to critique my paper though. After reading it aloud to the entire class, he paused for a moment and said that the paper was a bunch of “crap”. He continued to tear my work apart and embarrass me in front of the entire class. He didn’t attack the grammar or spelling or sentence structure because all of that was correct. He did attack my ideas harshly and I could feel my face turning red and being more embarrassed than I had ever been in my life. That day I dropped out of college and never returned. I lost my dream of being an architect and changed the entire direction of my life.

My point is this:

There are things I can change. I can influence my children and others around me. I can love them, nurture them, guide them and help build their future. And one day, one of the people that I have influenced might do something great. Perhaps they will design or build something that will help the earth and everyone on it. Perhaps their invention will calm the wind, harness the energy from the sea, reverse the effects of global warming or take us to the stars. So maybe just maybe, I can change the world. You can too………

Have a wonderful day,
Greg