LJSALL The difference between a dream and reality is the action you take. - Oct 24, 2009 add/view comments (0)

He found a variety of ways to support the difference he was making even when everyone around him seemed to be laughing. He stood proud. He found a way of enrolling people to take his packs and never wavered from his stand. He would come home with packs and give them to his friends and family. He’d ride the subway on his way home and offer them to his fellow riders. When they’d laugh, he’d laugh with them and still find a way of getting them to take them. He was making his mark in the world of condom distribution!

By the end of his summer employment,he knew more about condoms than anyone I know and he was one of two that were offered continued employment in the fall. His evaluation read 4.8 out of a possible 5. When asked how he fell short of a perfect 5, he simply replied “Well, I wasn’t team. The others talked all day and slowed the process. When I realized that talking to them about speeding up wouldn’t work and I had a quota I wanted to make, I’d take my packs and go over to the side to avoid being distracted. So I really don’t mind “why” I fell short of my perfect 5.”

Oh Lord, he said “Team.” The trainer/mother in me wanted so bad to go in there and be with him about the importance of team and how in life we get to create team, blah, blah, blah, but the human side of me (the common side of all of us) said “he gets it or he will. Not now. Don’t go in there searching to create perfection picking away at what doesn’t fit into my beliefs. Love him exactly where he is in ALL that he is.” And when he shrugged and asked, “Can we frame it” my heart was full of love and pride as I laughed with him and saw the five year old who brought home his first picture and asked “can we hang it on the refrigerator”—Pure joy, pride and happiness.


I look around at our youth and their/our unwillingness to jump in the middle of chaos or being willing to be different—break away from the pact, our unwillingness to say things to our youth (because they belong to “someone else”) or when at work or with friends and we’re faced with others bad-mouthing or ridiculing others. The abuse that happens next door that we say “not my business” and all the other ways we defer standing for fear of not fitting in. I noticed with my son, how we knock at others dreams and purpose because they are not the path we would choose for ourselves versus honoring the fact that they have a path or purpose—whatever it may be, and finding a way to have their purpose fit into ours. And I noticed in my son, his willingness to dare to be different and his pride when not perfect and his stand for excellence.

In life, we need to be willing to fall short of perfection to live a stand of excellence. Sometimes we have to be willing to break away from the pact to go for our vision. We can acknowledge our breakdown, learn from it, and continue to stand even when it seems that we are standing alone. 

We get to find a vision worth going for, a contribution worth risking the laughs and the ridicule—a sense of happiness and purpose that is all our own that drives us to strive to create extraordinary results “we” can be proud of. 

We each hold a purpose, a goal, a vision uniquely our own and if we look deep enough and cared enough, we can find it in others and have it be exactly what we need to have our own turn out.

There is a condom distributor in all of us, it’s about time we owned it and allowed that purpose to call us into action to make our own little slice of the world a little brighter. So cheers to the condom distributer, the latex maker, the plastic wrapper makers and those who wear them. Thanks for making my life and my purpose a little easier.