It’s yours to give, freely…

~~~

“Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are?”

“We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move.”

“You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel?”

“You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.”

                  ~ Pablo Casals

First, we must believe, and most of us never heard this message when it might have naturally taken root.

As Clear Channel converts entire markets into voice-tracked music boxes, as Cumulus discards programming and management brilliance around which it feels discomfort, both companies more desperate to cut expense than create excellence and delight, ponder this…

She was christened Mary Anne Evans, and became one of the leading writers of the Victorian era, authoring 7 novels, including the widely-acclaimed, Middlemarch.

But that’s not how we know her, for at the time she wrote, women were judged more harshly than men, in both their professional and private lives. I think most still are.

And so she hid, and wrote, under a pen name.

“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”

You know her as George Eliot.

Her words are as true for you now as they were for her then.

Never accept a definition of yourself that makes you less than you know you are. Even now. Even in this economy.

Live up to the promise you inherited the moment you were born.

Be the unique and precious gift you are.