Reach high, for the stars lie hidden in your soul!

Many of us are searching for those things that are important and bring meaning to our lives, similar to the quest of Albanian-born Agnes Gonxha Bojaxhiu. Born in 1910, the daughter of an Albanian grocer, Agnes left for Ireland at 18 years of age to initiate her quest; "Reach high, for the stars lie hidden in your soul. Dream deep, for every dream precedes the goal." Standing only 5' tall, she dedicated her life to selflessly serve others, one by one: "If you can't feed a hundred people, then feed just one." "We know only too well that what we are doing is nothing more than a drop in the ocean. But if the drop were not there, the ocean would be missing something."

Six weeks later, she sailed to India where she labored for 69 years: "Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier."

Watching her bathe and clean a leper in the slums of Calcutta, an American reporter remarked, "I wouldn't do that for a million dollars." To which she replied, "Neither would I." "If you judge people, you have no time to love them." "The biggest disease today is not leprosy or tuberculosis but rather the feeling of being unwanted, uncared for, and deserted by everybody."

The diminutive Albanian woman, desiring to quietly serve others was showered with honors --- India's Padmashri (Lord of the Lotus), the United States of America's Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Nobel Prize for Peace, among others.

The world would call her Mother Teresa.

"We think sometimes that poverty is only being hungry, naked and homeless. The poverty of being unwanted, unloved, and uncared for is the greatest poverty." "The most terrible poverty is loneliness and the feeling of being unloved." "If we have no peace, it is because we have forgotten that we belong to each other."

To my children I would say, "Reach High, Dream Deep and use any success and joy that comes your way to fill the oceans drop by drop ... " The higher you reach and the deeper you dream NOW the more drops for the ocean. That is true gratitude ... The stars lie hidden within your soul! This I BELIEVE!

This story was sent in a letter to the employees of Davis School District just before our Christmas Break (I refuse to call it a Holiday Break) 2011.