Life has a balance and when at times the darkness prepares to overwhelm, light bursts through the clouds and brings tremendous joy and healing. It seems for me, the depths to which my challenges take me are negated by the heights my positive experiences launch me.Last week I spent six days in New York City realizing the efforts of almost an entire year. Last winter I visited the Associate Dean at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism and discussed opportunities for partnership. Resulting from that conversation was a 5-day journalism training conference on adolescent boys and whether there is a crisis or not, held last week. Media attention seems to think it so, but what do the experts have to say? I brought Mrs. Carter to the conference along with several experts in my circle. (Pictured left: Monkey Bar restaurant where we had dinner)
There are very few people that become more and more admirable as you get to know them, but admittedly, Mrs. Carter is one of them. I continue to sit in awe of her passion and “realness” with which she lives her life, something for which I have a front seat view.
(Pictured left: Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism)[A woman is real if in the back of the motorcade she announces to me that she just realized she has on two different earrings, one a hoop and one a medallion. We laughed and I offered up mine for her to wear. She thought a moment and simply said “Oh well, it isn’t a big deal,” as we head off to the cameras of Jonathan Demme (famed for Philadelphia and Silence of the Lambs) who happens to be filming Mrs. Carter that day to capture the Columbia conference. I have a lot to learn. She knows what is important!]
For those of you that are in my close circle, I guess that means all of you if you are reading this, I have to admit that most of the time while in NYC I had to pinch myself to believe such things were really happening! I am the little girl from Hudson, MI, a farming community, and somehow I have found myself in a circle that seems hardly real for I have done nothing in this life to deserve the opportunities that continue to be thrust my way. For a little girl from Hudson, MI doesn’t have a private dinner at one of NYC top restaurants with a former First Lady, nor does she eat meals in the World Room at Columbia University where the Pulitzer Prizes are announced, nor does she have Mrs. Carter and secret service calling her on her private cell phone, nor does she rub shoulders with some of the top mental health experts and journalists in the world. How did this happen? Many of these people not only call me colleague but friend, and I am awed that they do so.
As I sat in the conference next to Mrs. Carter and stared out the window to the Romanesque pillars on the imposing Columbia buildings, I found myself believing that anything is possible in this world. Anything. It is only our minds that get in the way and draw parameters to keep things “safe.” What if we chose to remove the parameters and live life as if anything could be possible? I had a beautiful picture of that sitting next to me in the form of Mrs. Carter. She was just a little girl from Plains, GA (even smaller than Hudson, MI) in a segregated south surrounded by cotton farms. I bet at 6, and even 36, she never dreamed she would be sitting where she is today but somehow she found the space to believe…to believe it is all possible. (Pictured right: my view from the journalism school looking on campus)
She didn’t draw parameters, and I have chosen that neither will I. Life is too short – and too much is possible.
As I write this, pending trips await to Romania in the spring and South Africa in the summer and Columbia Univ. and the New York Times Company Foundation are already talking about partnering on another larger scale conference next year. My program has officially outgrown me, and with that comes the choice – do I draw parameters and try to hold it all in with the hope to control it, or do I open my arms wide to what opportunities await and let it grow? To let it grow bigger and better than me, that is my choice. For the neediest and most wanting in this world could be reached by this initiative, as I just had a Fellow return from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and one left today for Ethiopia. The potential is wide and vast and I cannot squelch that, even if it challenges my need to control. Too much is at stake. I will choose to stare my need for control in the face and let it all grow – grow beautiful and bigger than me.
