Just Imagine

I sure hope someone is still reading this blog, even though it's summer. Because all the sudden, I was stricken with the feeling that I needed to tell you all that you can be anything you want to be, and you can do anything you want to do. Point:

When I was a kid, there was a basketball player who played for N.C. State and eventually for the Atlanta Hawks (this is mostly where I remember him from) and then the Kings for awhile, whose name was Spud Webb. Webb was five foot seven. In the NBA. If you can imagine that. Whenever I've met a player from the NBA, or even walked by one in the airport, I feel like a midget, and you all know how tall I am. Six foot two. I'm guessing Dylan ended this school year at about five foot seven, if not taller, and this is the size Spud Webb was. (Dylan, of course, will get much taller in his lifetime, I'm just using him as a point of reference.) Webb was cut from his high school varsity basketball team because he was too short.

By the time he got to college, he started scoring ten points a game, and when he got to the NBA, he won the Slam Dunk Contest. He had all kinds of special trick dunks that were amazing. At five foot 7 inches tall. Against giants. There were all kinds of David and Goliath references when he played, and I think they were true, but I'm sure that's not what he dwelled on. He made the most of his talents. He wouldn't listen to anyone when they told him he couldn't make it as an NBA player. Just think if he'd listened to the coach who cut him for the varsity team, and given up. What would have happened?

Let's take George Washington Carver. I read you guys his story. He was born a slave. When the Civil War was over, he watched the rest of his family as they were dragged off and killed by the Ku Klux Klan. He wasn't going to stay a slave. He went and became a botanist, which is a scientist who studies plants. When his peanut farmer friends suddenly found themselves with too many peanuts--so many more than people were asking for, what did he do? He went and found more uses for peanuts. Over two-hundred of them. Shampoo, glue, stain-remover, you name it. Made from peanuts. He even invented peanut butter. Suddenly there was more demand for peanuts.

What if his friends had been cotton farmers, or squash farmers? Then we'd have hundreds of uses for those things. Honestly, his story just goes to show that there is still so much untapped potential out there.

Do you guys understand this?

Anyone can do anything.

There are thousands of other stories like this in the world. Many of them we don't know anything about.

Become one of them. I assure you, all of you can do it. I know that first hand. Now prove it to the rest of the world.