How often do you really stop to look around you on a daily basis? One of my favorite things to do when I’m stuck in a line somewhere or stopped in traffic is to people watch. How often have you done the same thing and witnessed a group of young people hanging around buildings, on the corners of intersections, or lounging on the front steps of some complex? Ever been bold enough to look them in the eye? If you did chances are you wouldn’t find what you expected. Strip away the angry look, the hostile posturing, the casual way in which they use their bodies and do you know what you’re really witnessing? Fear.  Fear that this is all that there is. Fear that their life will never get any better. Fear that there is no other way to exist. 

I understand this all too well. Where I grew up, originally, there were people like this around me. I was lucky in that I had strongly convicted family members who helped me to understand that it wasn’t my environment, social status, skin color, gender, or religious affiliation that defined who I was. “I” defined who I was by the choices I made. Making the choice to learn a better way has made all the difference for me. It seems so simple, doesn’t it? To just act better and things will be better?  But most inspirational and motivational experts will tell you that this is exactly what does the trick.  After all, YOU are the author of your own life’s story. Don’t like the way it’s being written…rewrite and revise it. One of the easiest ways that I know to do that is to take a simple class on how to treat people….an etiquette or manners class.

Recently, I was most humbled when I looked out at the waiting, expectant faces of the participants of a dining workshop, and I realized that I was living my dream. For a split second I was that little awkward girl in Panama, leaning out on the balcony wondering about what I would be when I grew up and who I would become.

And all of a sudden, here I was.

Though they did not know it, I stood before them as a personal testimony to perseverance and determination to write the pages of my own life story. If anything I am the poster-child for never giving up. Those kids on the corners of life don’t have an exclusive on fear, you know. We’ve all had ideas that we never did anything with, thought of things that we’d like to do or places we’d like to travel. Though we give a myriad of excuses for WHY these things never materialized, if you are honest with yourself, you didn’t put it off for any other reason than ‘fear’. Fear that it wouldn’t work out, that you’d have to suffer later, that someone else would be made uncomfortable. But I am here to tell you, gentle friends, that living a life of purpose (destiny) is better than living a life of regret.

Time to spread your wings….on the manners side.