Children can make you say things you don’t mean, like, “SHUT UP!” and “JUST LEAVE ME ALONE” and “OH MY GOD STOP TOUCHING ME!” Or maybe that’s just me.

I work harder to control my temper these days than I ever have in my life. I’m not a naturally calm person. I’m impatient. I don’t tolerate rudeness well. The inevitable multi-tasking of motherhood FREAKS ME OUT and paralyzes my brain so that I can hardly string words together. Yesterday morning, as I was cooking eggs, making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, boiling water and listening to the Tyrant tell a complicated story about Operetta the Monster High doll, I really needed Hot Firefighter Husband to tear himself away from the iPad and help. But I couldn’t summon the words to tell him what to do. Instead I just said, “BE PROACTIVE! I NEED YOU TO BE PROACTIVE!”

He rolled his eyes and went to brush his teeth. He is simultaneously both saintly and intolerable.

Anyway, thanks to Cymbalta and my semi-enforced No Drinking During the Week policy, I’m able to hold my tongue more often than not. But I said something last week that haunts me. I was trying to get the Tyrant dressed for school, which I imagine is like trying to convince Kim Kardashian to clothe herself from the Target sale rack. Also, the Tyrant likes to do gymnastics while she dresses, and I have to pretend that she’s my baby fish.

On this particular morning, I was running late and she, because she’s five, didn’t care. She wanted to play, and became very frustrated with me. Finally, she said, “I miss my old home in Guatemala. I want to go live at my old home.”

And I snapped, “You want to go back to Guatemala? Fine. Go back to Guatemala. See how you like it.” Then I dropped her clothes and walked out of the room. The words slammed against my head even as they exited my mouth, but there they were, a handful of syllables poised to poison my baby’s sense of security.

I tried to walk away from that moment, but it followed me and sat on my shoulders and weighed me down like an anvil. I could never have imagined that I would say something like that to one of my children. It horrifies me that in a moment of sheer immaturity, I hurled a thought that surely lies at the heart of every adopted child’s worst nightmare.

Within a few minutes, we had made up and I told her that I would never send her away, that I was her forever mom and we would be together always. She showed no signs of understanding that I had crossed a line. She got dressed, and we held hands and sang songs on the way to school.

Then a few days ago, we were driving along and she was prattling on about something and I heard her mention Guatemala, so I listened more carefully.

“….and my Guatemala mother didn’t take care of me, so I RUNNED AWAY!” she exclaimed, using hand motions to demonstrate how quickly she had fled the scene.

My stomach lurched.

“Darling,” I said. “Honey. That’s not how it was. Your birth mother loved you very much. She wanted to take care of you herself. But she couldn’t. That’s why I’m your real mom, okay? It doesn’t mean your birth mom doesn’t love you, too.”

“OOOOOHHHH!” she said. “Now I remember. Will you put on my favorite song?” Which is LMFAO’s I’m Sexy And I Know It. And we moved on.

I don’t believe she remembers any of her time in Guatemala.  She was 13 months old when we brought her home, and had spent her first nine months of life in an overcrowded orphanage. But she knows that she was adopted, and somewhere in her spirit lies a tiny seed of doubt about whether she belongs here, with me and her dad and siblings.

On a busy morning in March 2012, I threw a little fertilizer on that seed. I know, it was just a quick exchange, over in an instant. She’s only five. She may never recall that I said it.

Still. I can’t take it back.

The questions featured in this occasional column were written by actual people.

Dear Savvy Sister,

I loaned my best friend money about nine years ago – before I had kids –  to get her car out of repo. She told me it was the bank’s fault. I also helped her get a different loan from another bank. She agreed to pay me back the money – about $5,000 – as soon as she got things back in order. But she’s only repaid me about $300. Every time I mention the money, she avoids me or says she has unexpected things that have popped up. Now she is pregnant and says she’s stressed about baby bills.

I am at a loss as to what to do. I don’t want to take her to court, but I want her to understand that if I was a bank, she couldn’t just blow me off. Yes, I have learned my lesson on lending money to friends, but I just want it to be all over so I can move on with my friend, or worse case scenario, without a friend.

Sincerely,

Singe-life baggage

Dear Baggage,

The poet Bryan H. McGill said, “Never expect a loan to a friend to be paid back if you want to keep that friend.” Damn, I hate when people do my work for me. But it’s really as simple as that. Fortunately for you, I have some white space yawning before me, so I’ll expound.

You say you want this financial boondoggle to be over. GREAT NEWS! POOF! It’s over! Bad news: So long, five grand.

Believe me, your friend knows that you are not a bank. That’s why she came to you in the first place, and why she hasn’t paid you back. And I promise you she has more than justified this in her mind with half-truths like,  She doesn’t need the money as much as I do, and I’ve done so much for her over the years, and What does she expect me to do? Sell a kidney? Which is illegal, but who cares? A healthy one might go for $20,000! That’s a lot of Chardonnay. Which isn’t good for the one remaining kidney. So that whole scheme won’t work.

I have given money to friends on numerous occasions, and it has botched more than one relationship. Now I only expect one thing in return: a thank you, and a continuation of the friendship. It sounds like you’ve had both. What’s facing you now is a decision: Do you really want a best friend who continually pushes you to the bottom of the priority pile?

You have two options here, and both choices involve a healthy dose of Fuggedaboutit.

Choice #1 Find a new best friend. Personally, I would find it difficult to remain besties with someone who would allow this wound to fester for nine years. Also – you mentioned taking her to court. That leads me to believe she’s not a true bestie, because the only reason I would ever take my BFF to court is for a special girl date to watch Newt Gingrich being sentenced for something or other.

No long, shallow goodbyes needed here. Just gradually taper off your relationship. You can still have coffee now and again, and by all means send her a baby gift, but branch out. See other people, particularly people who refrain from asking you for money.

Choice #2 Put this behind you and carry on. Is this person a stellar BFF in all other ways? Has she taken care of your children while you were vomiting up parts of your innards? Does she make you laugh so hard you pee in your pants? Do you wish she lived next door so you could hug her every day? Then invite her out for lunch and tell her this:

Esmerelda, You are the best friend I could possibly have. I adore you. But I feel like this money thing has come between us, and I’m sorry about that, because the truth is, I just helped you out in a difficult time, and I think you would do the same for me. You’ve more than repaid me in love and friendship. So let’s just put it behind us and never mention it again. 

She might protest, but be firm. Tell her you don’t see how you can carry on being friends if the money issue continues to simmer under the surface, and that you insist the loan be forgiven.

If you cannot stomach the idea of reciting that speech, then she is not really a forever friend and you must choose Option #1.

A final comment: I am not against giving friends money. I’m a socialist in this regard – if I have something that a friend needs, I’m happy to share if I can. I would give my BFF money, a kidney, and my pinky toe, which I never use anyway, in a heartbeat and never worry about being repaid. But money contains a power that us mortals don’t fully comprehend. In that regard, it’s best not to get too attached to it.

Do you have a problem? I can probably solve it. Write to me confidentially at tricia@mylefthook.com. 

My book club peeps wanted to read The Paris Wife by Paula McLain. I did not. But I don’t make waves because they graciously allowed me to join their group after my last book club experiment ended with me crying in a driveway.

So I read The Paris Wife, and I loved it, which is why everyone should belong to a book club – for the challenge of stepping out of your comfort zone.

The novel tells the story of Ernest Hemingway’s first wife, Hadley, and their life together in Paris during the 1920s. That’s what threw me off – life in Paris in the 1920s. OH MON DIEU somebody prop open my eyelids. Drinking, the Seine, croissants, blah blah blah. I kind of feel this way about the movie The Artist, too, which SWEPT (according to Entertainment Tonight!) the Oscars this year. Can anyone convince me I won’t be bored into a coma by a black-and-white silent movie featuring a cute dog? I think I’d rather watch golf. Maybe I need to join a movie club, too.

Hemingway marries Hadley when he’s 21 years old, and she’s closing in on 30. He’s already a legend in his own mind, but nobody else has heard of him. He writes and writes and writes, but he hasn’t yet been published. Hadley – quiet, lonely, homely – has just buried her mother, and falls hard for the boisterous, adventurous Hemingway. They move to Paris so that he can pursue a literary career. He spends his days writing; at night, he and Hadley visit cafes and brasseries and become entwined with other literary ex-patriots including Gertrude Stein, Sherwood Anderson and John Dos Passos. Lots of drinking ensued.

SLIGHT SPOILER ALERT: Hemingway eventually becomes wildly successful and famous. He begins hanging out with lots of carefree hedonists, and hedonism apparently is contagious. Relationship challenges follow.

The book certainly could be classified as a romance, and maybe that’s what else initially turned me off. I’m more of a dysfunction kind of gal. But – CHECK! – lots of dysfunction here. Hemingway did eventually kill himself, after all. The story is written in Hadley’s voice, and it’s astounding to hear her virtually abandon herself to allow Hemingway to shine. One of his greatest novels – The Sun Also Rises – was penned during their short time together. She sees brilliance in him, and she almost makes it her life’s mission to be the foundation allowing that genius to bloom. It reminded me of my own The GREATNESS, part II, because we always speak of Hemingway with such reverence – and certainly he was a GREAT writer. But he really wasn’t that great of a person. He was self-absorbed and stubborn, and not particularly loyal. Hadley, though, possessed that rare kind of GREATNESS born of recognizing and accepting that one’s own fate is to quietly facilitate the blossoming of someone else.

The other awesome part of The Paris Wife, which is based on biographies, past interviews, and Hadley’s own letters and words, is watching the artist at work. Hemingway’s compulsion to write was so all-encompassing that it became synonymous with being awake. As a writer myself, it certainly made me confront Hot Firefighter Husband immediately and tell him I need my own writing studio, 12 hours daily away from the children, relief from household chores, and a bottle of absinthe. Yep. That’s what I need.

Anyway, loved this book, and love my book club for making me read it. Next we’re tackling 50 Shades of Grey, an erotic novel that some people are calling mommy porn. WHEEEE! I’ve heard it’s not very well-written but has LOTS OF SEX. Again, not something I would have chosen. I wanted to read Katherine Boo’s behind the beautiful forevers: Life, Death and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity.  BUZZ KILL. So we debated – sex versus poverty. Dominatrix versus old woman digging through trash. Okay, fine. 50 Shades it is. Honestly, they had me at dominatrix.

Lost in the whole contraception debate is another, more compelling reason for women to take the birth control pill, which is to avoid having gallons of blood pouring from their vaginas for days at a time.

Is there any further proof of evolution? For God to have made us this way on purpose — well, it’s a serious design flaw. If men had to suffer through the indignity of leaving a meeting in order to insert compacted cotton sticks into their genital cavities, birth control pills would practically be required, like vaccinations and vitamins. I won’t even go into the bloating. And the pain. The headaches. The mood swings. Seriously, it’s like having food poisoning one week a month, but involving a different orifice.

Not all birth control pills suspend menstruation. But little known fact: when the birth control pill was initially developed, it eliminated menstrual periods. It was revised to allow periods to occur in an effort to please the Catholic church – the logic being that the method would seem more natural. Because women suffering is so natural. Anyway, the Pope was not convinced.

I’m nearing the time in parenthood when tampons will be added to the grocery list. And I know that I should approach this enthusiastically, like, Oh, honey, you’re becoming a woman! It’s a beautiful thing! Our bodies are so magical! Honestly, though, the day I had my hysterectomy was one of the top 10 highlights of my life. I’m tempted to put my daughter on birth control pills immediately just to spare us all from the drama. Would that be wrong?

All of that ranting aside, here’s a guest editorial about the issue that I penned for the currently edition of Folio Weekly, a Northeast Florida news magazine.

Read it here.

And as you read it, please remember that I don’t have horns. Also note that I’m generously refraining from talking about Rush Limbaugh, whose mere existence makes the best case possible in favor of contraception.

After we watched The Lorax the other day, we stopped at the theater’s line of gumball machines. Because that’s what we do.

The Pterodactyl used his quarters to buy/win the tiniest cross ever on a piece of black thread, and he gave it to me. I’ve been wearing it ever since. I love it.

“Aren’t you afraid you’ll melt?” asked my friend Eeeee. HAHAHA! She’s hilarious. Listen, people, just because I don’t go to church does not mean I have horns.

“Christians don’t OWN the cross,” I said. Eye-rolling ensued. But I’m correct on this one. The cross existed long before Christianity, probably because it’s not really that complicated a symbol. The Tao cross was first used by ancient Egyptians. And crosses were occasionally used to decorate images of Greek and Roman deities. It was a PAGAN symbol!

I love crosses! They make me feel happy inside! Perhaps the God of my Catholic youth still harbors a tiny vacation home in a corner of my soul. Or maybe they’re just an excellent accessory.

You know what else I love? Fish. I even thought of getting a rudimentary fish for my next tattoo. “Like a Jesus fish?” asked my trainer, Son of Sam.

No, no, no. Christians may not have the fish. The fish belongs to the world, okay? And Jews? Please share the star.

Mormons, you can try to monopolize the image of a man blowing a trumpet, but as a New Orleans native, let me just say, good luck with that.

The Buddhists use a conch shell as one of their great symbols. But they don’t claim it! I have a conch shell right here next to me as I write! That doesn’t mean I’m a Buddhist. Although I like Buddha quite a bit. I would like to put a little Buddha statue in our front yard, but Hot Firefighter Husband is afraid the neighbors would FUH-REAK! Wait till I put up my Obama sign. Heeheehee! Seriously, people, we’re like pioneers in this place.

So anyway, I’m still wearing the tiny cross, and I haven’t melted, and maybe it’s a coincidence, but I’ve suddenly remembered the words to the Glory Be, which was always my favorite prayer because it’s the shortest. Glory be to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and every shall be, world without end. Amen. BOO-yah!

A couple of years ago, the sweet old lady who lived next to us began to lose her mind. She knocked on my door one day to use a phone because hers, she said, wasn’t working. She was trying to call her fiance, and the call wouldn’t go through. She couldn’t stop crying.

I later learned her fiance’s daughter had blocked her number because the couple had broken up. But my neighbor couldn’t remember that they had broken up, so she kept having to relive the heartbreak every day anew. Her dementia progressed quickly; within months, her children moved her into a nursing home.

We missed her. We waited anxiously to watch who moved in, hoping for a family with children.

But a single retired man bought the house, and within weeks he began transforming the yard, hauling away endless bags of brush. He brought in a crew that built a new driveway of expensive blush-colored pavers that extended to the back in a long winding sidewalk. He seemed happy about the project.

Soon, though, we noticed him outside every morning with a grabber, one of those long poles with teeth on the end used by inmates to pick up trash on the side of the road. Slowly, he shuffled along the length of the new pavers, trying to clear them of something.

One day he called Hot Firefighter Husband. “He wants to cut down some of our trees,” Husband told me.

“What? Why?”

“They’re sweet gum trees. The little seed pods they drop are driving him crazy.”

“That’s ridiculous! Did you tell him no?”

“No. I said he could do it.”

A mild temper tantrum ensued. But Husband pointed out that we were doing some backyard work ourselves, including installation of a small concrete pad and fire pit. They had reached a gentleman’s agreement of sorts – if we let him cut down our trees, he wouldn’t complain about our project.

Sometimes I call Husband Boutros Boutros Bob, after former United Nations Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali. He has a knack for diplomacy. Once he talked a man out of stalking me because, he explained, she’s very sensitive.

For several weeks, I watched each day for the Tree Man to come. I developed a particular affection for the soon-to-be executed sweet gum trees. I watched as birds landed on their branches. I liked the ghostly way in which the gray moss hung.

One morning as I rushed out of the house on my way to the gym, the Tree Man arrived. I knew him – he had done some work for us, cutting down a rotten tree and some straggly palms. He was a good guy.

I said hello to him, then asked him to save a log from one of the gums to use as a balance beam for the kids. He said he would.

When I came home, the sweet gums were gone, ground into dust by the mulcher. In their place was a clear view of my neighbor’s paved driveway, and a dearth of shade for the mona lavender growing in my front yard.

Yesterday I took my children to see The Lorax, and I thought about my sweet gum trees. Did you know Florida pioneers often peeled away the bark and used the tree’s resin as chewing gum?

In the movie, a young boy endeavors to discover why his town of Thneedville has no trees. Through him we meet the Lorax, a small furry orange being with an enormous mustache who can fly by holding up his own tail. It’s hard to explain. Anyway, the Lorax serves as protector of the forest, and is heartbroken when (SPOILER ALERT!) the Once-ler cuts down all the trees to make thneeds for the masses.

“I speak for the trees,” says the Lorax, “for the trees have no tongues.” 

My sweet gum trees could make noise. They rustled in the wind, and issued forth bop-bop-bops as woodpeckers hammered into their bark.

Now they’re gone, and it’s not that I miss them so much. I can’t even remember what they looked like, honestly. But sometimes as my children climb on the log we saved, I feel a pang of regret that the log isn’t still a tree.

I should have been more like the Lorax, I think. And maybe then I would know how to fly. 

My trainer Son of Sam has begun teaching me fancy boxing footwork. He may have secretly entered me into some sort of fighting tournament for aging suburban moms. I’ll do it, but I am NOT going to do that whole drop-weight thing involving laxatives and sweating. Ew. Also, I’ll be so bummed if my nose gets broken.

It’s a surprise to everyone that I’m good at boxing, including me. But there you have it. Some guy walked up to me in the gym today and said, “Remind me never to brawl with you.” And I was all, Dude, what are you talking about? If you look at me funny, I’ll go cry in a corner. Unless, you know, you hurt my kids. Then I’ll kill you. KIDDING! No, really.

Boxing, along with Son of Sam’s eternal stream of baffling anti-gravity exercises, has transformed me physically. But the biggest changes have been internal.

I’m just no longer afraid of life. I don’t worry so much about who likes me. I’m confident I can keep my children safe. I feel powerful! I’m comfortable occupying the space that the world has allotted to me.

I’ve been reading lately about champion boxer Quanitta Underwood, who’s expected to be a contender this summer at the Olympics. She’s already the fourth best lightweight boxer in the world.

A recent New York Times article chronicles the years of sexual abuse endured by her and her sister at the hands of their own father. Near the end of the piece, Underwood talks about meeting her father after he was released from prison, where he served time for the abuse. She recalls walking next to him, sizing him up. She wasn’t thinking about hitting him. But it was a huge source of comfort to her that if she had to, she could take him.

That’s exactly what boxing does for me. Seriously, peeps, I’m not going to hit you. But if I had to, I could. And that frees my mind up for more important things.

The Tyrant has decided she would like to be president after all. “I wanna be da fust gull president,” she says. First girl president. Okay. So I’m getting to work on changing the Constitution, since she mistakenly did not enter the world on U.S. soil. I’m also investigating which other countries might accept her candidacy. Anyone? Anyone? She’s an excellent tyrant….

To prepare, she’s working on her political rhetoric. Yesterday as we drove to school, she excitedly showed me a Pokemon she had captured while playing a Nintendo game. “Honey,” I said. “You don’t have a Pokemon game. Whose game is that?” Spoiler: it belonged to her brother, the Pterodactyl. Who does not share.

Silence. She looked at me. She looked at the game. She looked at me. She looked at the game.

“My brudda yet me bowow it,” she said. “But you don’t have to tell him, cuz he alweady knows.”

“Honey. Is that the truth? Because it’s very important that you always tell me the truth.”

She looked at me. She looked at the game. She looked at me. She looked at the game.

“Okay. He yet me bowow it a yong, yong time ago, and he – I know! I’ll give it back to you wight now!”

Holy Mitt Romney! Listen to the girl!

I think she could win Michigan.

Chapter 1   Chapter 2   Chapter 3   Chapter 4  Chapter 5  Chapter 6

Chapter 7  Chapter 8  Chapter 9  Chapter 10  Chapter 11  Chapter 12

Did you read the first one? Here, I’ll give you a link. 

The GREATNESS, Part I

Now you’re ready to move on.

My friend and I were talking recently, and she lamented that she wasn’t doing more with her life.

“I always swore I wouldn’t let myself be like my mother,” she said. “But here I am. Just a housewife.”

This friend has always spoken lovingly of her mother, and with great admiration. They’re very close. “So what does that mean?” I asked her. “Being just a housewife?”

This women has two children still living at home. She does all of the cooking, cleaning and laundry, and she attends every event in which her children participate. She also volunteers in the classroom of a low-income school.

And – incidentally – what does that make me? I guess I’m just a housewife, too. I write, of course, and I teach some fitness classes. Oh, and I don’t clean. I only do some of the cooking. I am pretty good at laundry. You could say I’m just (barely) a housewife.

So my friend has modeled herself after the person she has loved most in this world, the person who made her who she is. But she is defining herself as a product of her mother’s limitations rather than her successes. And of course, when you choose to be just a housewife, you are limited, there’s no question. You cannot be Secretary of State, and you can’t become vice president of Nabisco or own a trendy restaurant that serves tapas.

You can’t be GREAT, defined as remarkable in magnitude, degree, or effectiveness, or markedly superior in character or quality. I mean, you can be, but who the fuck cares if you’re a great housewife?

Ah, but here’s the catch. When you define yourself by what you do rather than who you are, then your limitations can be stifling and depressing. My friend has made an imaginary box in which to store all of her accomplishments, and in the box she sees only a few ancient years of a promising career cut short by the decision to have a family.

But why are her children not in the box? Why hasn’t she stored her friendships in the box? The lasagnas and soups made for ailing neighbors, the poor child she taught to read?

When I was a girl, my parents bought a place in the country where we spent weekends and summers. Across the road lived Mr. Core, an old farmer who looked after our property when we weren’t there. Mr. Core had been a rodeo star in his youth, riding bucking broncos on the national circuit until one of them landed on top of him and broke his back. No one thought he’d survive, much less walk again, but he did, and spent his life growing vegetables and raising farm animals. His wife had left him long ago for the city, and so he lived with his mother, Aunt Emma, who once killed a water moccasin when she was 82 years old.

We loved to visit Mr. Core and pick strawberries, and he’d often come over for barbecued steak and beer. Mr. Core didn’t care much about money. He woke up each morning with determination anew to play the hand he was dealt. He had a tractor, but he preferred to work the fields with his old-fashioned plow and Belgian work horse. By each day’s end, he was covered in dirt and soaked, and more a part of this earth than any modern environmentalist could possibly be. He gardened organically before Kashi cereal even existed – no pesticides, he said, because he planted enough for him and the bugs.

When he met Hot Firefighter Husband, he pulled me aside and said, “Well, I think he’s all right. You know he’s a little bit shorter than you, but that’s just fine.” Later he told Husband that if we moved near him, he’d teach us how to raise capons.

Mr. Core loved my family fiercely and loyally, and we loved him. When he died, he left his land to his son. It was all he had. And now his son lives in much the same way.

I think of Mr. Core as a GREAT man. He lived every day like the world needed him to get something done, and I adored that about him. He never had nearly as much wealth or as many possessions as my father, or even me, but he didn’t let that define him. His greatness came from his ability to coax into bloom the Louisiana strawberries so sweet we ate them straight from the plant, and the way his horse nuzzled his pockets for a piece of apple.

So my father quit work in the prime of his career, and since then he has spent his time, his money and his energy on us. His children. He thinks about us all of the time, and he loves us so much he frequently cries because he misses us. My mother has had two paying jobs in her life – the first as a secretary for the Humble Oil Company, and the second working for BellSouth. She hasn’t been employed since the year before I was born. Right now she’s on a trip to London with her eldest granddaughter, who turns 13 next month.

They were – and are – GREAT people. GREAT parents, GREAT friends, GREAT contributors to their community. But no greater than Mr. Core, who I don’t think had ever even been on a plane, and no less great than, say, Ernest Hemingway, whose literary legend came at the expense of his family relations.

Back to my friend: I think she’s a great woman. But her own claim to greatness is limited by her failure to properly define it. And so is mine, I’m afraid.

“You are a great woman,” Hot Firefighter Husband recently told me. Can that be true? Husband has this unique ability to recognize and truly believe that ordinary people can live extraordinary lives. It’s one of the things I love most about him.

The documentary I mentioned in The GREATNESS, Part I, is Tom Shadyac’s film I Am. Shadyac, a successful movie producer, made this mind-altering movie after suffering a bike accident in which he was critically injured. He based it on two questions: What’s wrong with the world, and what can we do to fix it? He asks those two questions of dozens of life experts, including Desmond Tutu, Lynne McTaggert, and people who study the works of Rumi, Ghandi, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

“The sea is really only drops of water that have come together,” Tutu says in the film. Am I just a drop of water? I am. But I’m beginning to think that’s okay.

I have always wanted to be a GREAT writer, a GREAT journalist. I want to be recognized and lauded. But must I do that at the expense of the other tasks I am obligated to accomplish? Am I willing to follow a narrow, hazardous path toward mythical greatness, and in the process forgo the certainty of being great at something else with more potential to better this world?

I’m not a Bible-thumping gal, but I do love me some Corinthians, especially this, found in 1 Corinthians 13:13:  Three things will last forever–faith, hope, and love–and the greatest of these is love.

I vow to be GREAT. But my greatness must be measured by the love I put forth for those who depend on me and this earth which sustains me. Without that love, after all, any GREATNESS falls short of its potential.

Even with an abundance of love, I’m still a drop of water. But sometimes, in a drought, a drop can be enough.