I’d like to start by telling you a story that takes place at the beginning of summer. It is actually not so much a story as it is a thought; a question that came across my mind one morning during breakfast at a hotel in San Diego. I was inside the hotel kitchen, and there was this little television in the corner broadcasting the early morning news report. People were sitting and conversing in hushed voices while the television flashed up headlines. It told us about the missing girl in Aruba; it updated us on the casualties of the day in Iraq; and it showed us photographs depicting the shadowed faces of Dylan and Shasta Groene, the two victims of an Idaho kidnapping. I, too, sat down and watched, and then I headed upstairs to start my day. As I walked I began slowly to wonder why anyone had bothered in the first place to show me the things I had just seen, or to tell me of the events taking place across the continents. Because I, along with the rest of the people in that kitchen, would in the end do nothing with that knowledge except put it into the back of my mind, as always. That’s when I first started to think that maybe there really was nothing in my power, or within my reach: nothing I could do about the things I saw on that little television.
You see, when I was in 6th grade and my parents told me I was switching schools again and transferring to Harker, I told them flat out I wasn’t going to go. I was tired of having to adjust to new schedules and rules and dress codes. I told my parents it wasn’t fair to force me to go somewhere I didn’t want to go. To my surprise, they agreed. They said I didn’t have to go if I really didn’t want to. They said that at the breakfast table, and then my mom turned around and pointed to our television, where the morning news report was just beginning. She said, “You don’t have to go, but if you do, you’re going to be with the people who are going to change all that. You’re going to be one of the people who stops all these things from happening.”
That was what finally made me agree to go, and for the longest time afterwards everything I saw or heard on the news, no matter how trifling or devastating, would fill me with this a mixture of excitement, and hope, and determination, and ultimately the knowledge that in a few years, I was going to play a part in changing these things.
But those “few years” later, as a would-be junior standing in the stairwell of a San Diego hotel, I was hardly the person who was going to go out and change anything. For one thing, I had no idea what career I wanted to pursue. While there were many things I felt passionate about, I had been told so many times to choose what I wanted to do based on the practical aspects. And I’ve always been the direct opposite of practical—the things that make me want to get up and do something have always been lofty ambitions, impossible dreams, visions, and goals that I’ve been told will get me nowhere. Goals like “stop all the horrible stuff on the news from happening”—an interesting choice for someone with barely enough attention span to stop her car at a red light. I’ve heard many times that everyone can make some difference, but I wondered, who would I have to be to make a great difference; like, to do something that actually matters? In that stairwell, I was only myself, one person, and for each one of my strengths I had double that amount of weaknesses. Who, then, would I have to try to become in order to change even one thing about the world I live in?
That was the thought I kept dwelling on when I arrived, in late June, for my first day of work at the Santa Clara Rec Center. The job description was literally, “little kids, theatre, and a whole lot of drama,” but it ended up not being nearly as tragic. On my first Friday there, the camp took a field trip to the swim center in Central Park. We were getting ready to leave when I saw Uma, the pretty little Indian girl who had attached herself to me permanently, sitting alone by the poolside. She was upset because she hadn’t passed her swim test and couldn’t go into the big pool. So I asked her, “Why don’t you practice swimming during the week? Can your mom or dad take you?”
She looked at me directly with her brown gaze. “My dad can’t because he has to take classes,” she explained, “He was laid off his old job and now he found a new one but he has to take classes. And my mom is pregnant with my little sister. So I can’t go swimming right now.”
So then I asked her: “Uma, who do you want to be when you grow up?”
Uma answered, “I want to be…somebody,” to which she added, simply, “I want to be me.”
It was hardy the answer I could expect from anybody, let alone an eight year old child. I have no doubt, knowing Uma, that despite the challenges she faces, she has great dreams and aspirations; but I also know that she will do the things she can do, and never get discouraged by everything she cannot change about herself or the world around her. Perhaps the lesson we can learn from Uma is that if we want to be somebody great, we have to be ourselves, and do something great.
I guess it doesn’t matter, then, what exactly we choose to devote our lives to. In theatre, there is a phrase that goes, “There are no small roles, only small actors.” I believe now that there are really no small roles in life either—no unimportant positions we can assume, no careers that limit or prohibit us from doing the incredible things we’ve all at one time imagined ourselves doing. There are only people who go through each day without ever taking a sip of that intoxicating stimulant known as passion; people who walk home in the evening without that feeling of having given everything they could give. These are the people who refuse to believe in themselves, and refuse to see that the only thing you have to be in order to accomplish something great is alive—so long as you’re living with your heart. It’s so easy to stand in that stairwell and tell yourself there’s nothing you can do, and to listen when people say that the things you imagine someday happening will never translate into reality. It’s harder start climbing–to show yourself, and to make the changes you can make; no matter how impossible your dreams may be to capture, no matter how daunting your task may seem.
I’d like to leave you with one final story, another one of my lofty little ambitions. I was Uma’s age when I came to America, and the day before we left Kiev, we traveled by subway to my aunt’s house to say goodbye to the rest of my family. I remember passing through the underground hallways, seeing all the people standing by the walls for the last time. There were people of all ages there, men and women, selling cheap artifacts, or bags of candy, or simply asking for change from the subway passengers. Many of these people lived in the underground, or in one-bedroom apartments on the fringes of the city. They were poor people, and I was the lucky girl who was going to go off to the place that they could only dream about. That’s when I got this brilliant idea. I was going to go to America and collect lots and lots of coins, all sorts of coins, from spare change to things I found on the street, and I was going to keep them all in this humungo bag. Then, when I got older, I would come back, and I would give coins to every person I would see, at every subway stop, on every entrance.
Time passed. I learned about customs and heard the laws on transporting foreign money by plane. I found out that coins had no value in the monetary exchange system. I realized just how little one penny was worth.
But this summer I finally figured out a way to make it work. It was on a Wednesday, and I was traveling with the camp kids on a bus back from Boomers in Livermore. I had spent the day partnered with a little girl name Candice Ruiz. We had played arcade games and I had driven her around on the go-cars, and by the end of the day we were both exhausted. On the bus, she fell fast asleep with her head on my shoulder for most of the ride.
The day was July 1st. Police were contemplating on giving up the search for Natalie Holloway, still missing in Aruba. June, which had just drawn to a close, was pronounced one of the deadliest months for U.S. troops in Iraq, with the death toll covering seventy-seven of the more than 1,800 casualties total since the beginning of the operation. Shasta Groene was found alive, and the man who had kidnapped her and killed three members of her family was captured and identified as Joseph Edward Duncan. And with all this going on around her, little Candice Ruiz fell asleep peacefully on my shoulder, because I was there for her when she needed me, and the way you change people’s lives, sometimes, is just by being there for them. For what was perhaps the first time in my life, I felt like I had done something quite incredible; I felt like I had just, almost, changed the world. That’s who I gave that very first coin to, then—to little Candice Ruiz on the bus.
And I think, in a little while, when I’ve given out enough coins, you’ll be able to see just how much of a difference each one has made.
~Nina V (fin. 8 23 05/ed./pres. 9 5 05)
I dunno. Felt like I should paste it in here to remind myself sometimes…:)
Thank you so much guys…this one was for you! <3
