Crystal shoes of Cinderella

"Hi! John." Mary ran towards me with a rare bright smile on her face, saying, "I'm gonna have a dance performance tonight. I hope you'll come. Here is the ticket. Don't forget!" She left in a hurry, disappearing in the throngs of people quickly.

"What?! What performance? Dance? Is that credible?" I asked myself. Mary was not such kind of girl. She was a quite ordinary one. I had never seen her making up or wearing attractive clothes, moreover, she always wore her big black-frame glasses, for she did not know how to dress up indeed. What a terrible thing, especially for a plain girl!

"I should go to, I must go to. That's a miracle!" I thought.

I arrived at the hall with the ticket, and found my seat. Her performance was the seventh one. I knew I would suffer from a hard time before her turn, for I had no sense of art, but her performance was worth of watching, no matter how long I would wait for.

Time went slowly, I struggled with myself not to fall asleep.

"Let's welcome the next exciting dance ― Latin!" Applause filled the hall at once.

I opened my eyes as large as possible, fearing to lose anything. Wearing a golden and shining skirt, Mary appeared on the glorious stage. Her dress went well with the brilliant lights. Such scene seemed to be a mermaiden showing up under the glittering sunshine, meanwhile, I could feel all the audience in the hall focused their eyes on her and it was also hard for me to remove my sights from her. She was so beautiful: her stature was slim; her long golden hair lay back in curls over her delicate ears. Dancing with a charming smile, she was fully absorbed in the Latin music. At this moment, she looked like a pretty butterfly flying on the splendid stage… I could hardly believe my eyes.

After all the performance ended, I waited for her at the gate.

"Hi!" She stood in front of me with a bag and her crystal high-heeled shoes in her hands, and dressed as she used to be, but the making-up still could be seen.

"How do you feel?" There was not a little bit tired expression appeared on her face.

"Fantastic!" I answered.

"Ha, ha. I knew it would be." She could not conceal her excitement, laughing like a child.

"May I lend a hand?"

"Thank you!" She handed her crystal shoes to me which were shining in the wonderful starry night; at the mean time, I realized that every girl has a pair of special shoes which are like the crystal shoes of Cinderella.

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Keep your dreams

I have a friend named Monty Roberts who owns a horse ranch in San Ysidro. He has let me use his house to put on fund-raising events to raise money for youth at risk programs.

The last time I was there he introduced me by saying, "I want to tell you why I let Jack use my house. It all goes back to a story about a young man who was the son of an itinerant horse trainer who would go from stable to stable, race track to race track, farm to farm and ranch to ranch, training horses. As a result, the boy's high school career was continually interrupted. When he was a senior, he was asked to write a paper about what he wanted to be and do when he grew up."

"That night he wrote a seven-page paper describing his goal of someday owning a horse ranch. He wrote about his dream in great detail and he even drew a diagram of a 200-acre ranch, showing the location of all the buildings, the stables and the track. Then he drew a detailed floor plan for a 4,000-square-foot house that would sit on a 200-acre dream ranch."

"He put a great deal of his heart into the project and the next day he handed it in to his teacher. Two days later he received his paper back. On the front page was a large red F with a note that read, 'See me after class.'"

"The boy with the dream went to see the teacher after class and asked, 'Why did I receive an F?'"

"The teacher said, 'This is an unrealistic dream for a young boy like you. You have no money. You come from an itinerant family. You have no resources. Owning a horse ranch requires a lot of money. You have to buy the land. You have to pay for the original breeding stock and later you'll have to pay large stud fees. There's no way you could ever do it.' Then the teacher added, 'If you will rewrite this paper with a more realistic goal, I will reconsider your grade.'"

"The boy went home and thought about it long and hard. He asked his father what he should do. His father said, 'Look, son, you have to make up your own mind on this. However, I think it is a very important decision for you.'"

"Finally, after sitting with it for a week, the boy turned in the same paper, making no changes at all. He stated, 'You can keep the F and I'll keep my dream.'"

Monty then turned to the assembled group and said, "I tell you this story because you are sitting in my 4,000-square-foot house in the middle of my 200-acre horse ranch. I still have that school paper framed over the fireplace." He added, "The best part of the story is that two summers ago that same schoolteacher brought 30 kids to camp out on my ranch for a week." When the teacher was leaving, he said, 'Look, Monty, I can tell you this now. When I was your teacher, I was something of a dream stealer. During those years I stole a lot of kids' dreams. Fortunately you had enough gumption not to give up on yours.'"

Don't let anyone steal your dreams. Follow your heart, no matter what.

 

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How Small People Make A Big Difference

Repression

Today, as I was relaxing at the beach, I couldn't help but eavesdrop on a conversation four high school kids we having on the beach blanket next to me. Their conversation was about making a positive difference in the world. And it went something like this…

"It's impossible to make a difference unless you're a huge corporation or someone with lots of money and power," one of them said.

"Yeah man," another replied. "My mom keeps telling me to move mountains � to speak up and stand up for what I believe. But what I say and do doesn't even get noticed. I just keep answering to 'the man' and then I get slapped back in place by him when I step out of line."

"Repression…" another snickered.

I smiled because I knew exactly how they felt. When I was their age, I was certain I was being repressed and couldn't possibly make a difference in this world. And I actually almost got expelled from school once because I openly expressed how repressed I felt in the middle of the principals' office.

I Have A Dream

Suddenly, one of the kids noticed me eavesdropping and smiling. He sat up, looked at me and said, "What? Do you disagree?" Then as he waited for a response, the other three kids turned around too.

Rather than arguing with them, I took an old receipt out of my wallet, ripped it into four pieces, and wrote a different word on each piece. Then I crumbled the pieces into little paper balls and handed a different piece to each one of them.

"Look at the word on the paper I just gave you and don't show it to anyone else." The kids looked at the single word I had handed each of them and appeared confused. "You have two choices," I told them. "If your word inspired you to make a difference in this world, then hold onto it. If not, give it back to me so I can recycle the paper." They all returned their words.

I scooted over, sat down on the sand next to their beach blanket and laid out the four words that the students had returned to me so that the words combined to form the simple sentence, "I have a dream."

"Dude, that's Martin Luther King Jr.," one of the kids said.

"How did you know that?" I asked.

"Everyone knows Martin Luther King Jr." the kid snarled. "He has his own national holiday, and we all had to memorize his speech in school a few years ago."

"Why do you think your teachers had you memorize his speech?" I asked.

"I don't really care!" the kid replied. His three friends shook their heads in agreement. "What does this have to do with us and our situation?"

"Your teachers asked you to memorize those words, just like thousands of teachers around the world have asked students to memorize those words, because they have inspired millions of repressed people to dream of a better world and take action to make their dreams come true. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

"Man, I know exactly what you're trying to do and it's not going to work, alright?" the fourth kid said, who hadn't spoken a word until now. "We're not going to get all inspired and emotional about something some dude said thirty years ago. Our world is different now. And it's more screwed up than any us can even begin to imagine, and there's little you or I can do about it. We're too small, we're nobody."

Together

I smiled again because I once believed and used to say similar things. Then after holding the smile for a few seconds I said, "On their own, 'I' or 'have' or 'a' or 'dream' are just words. Not very compelling or inspiring. But when you put them together in a certain order, they create a phrase that has been powerful enough to move millions of people to take action � action that changed laws, perceptions, and lives. You don't need to be inspired or emotional to agree with this, do you?"

The four kids shrugged and struggled to appear totally indifferent, but I could tell they were listening intently. "And what's true for words is also true for people," I continued. "One person without help from anyone else can't do much to make a sizable difference in this crazy world - or to overcome all of the various forms of repression that exist today. But when people get together and unite to form something more powerful and meaningful then themselves, the possibilities are endless.

Together is how mountains are moved. Together is how small people make a big difference.

 

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