I wish you were there.  I wish you could have experienced this moment with me. This moment changed me, forever. I can never think the same, I can never live the same, I can never believe the same. And this all began with one sentence, said by a 6 year old. Yes, a 6 year old changed my life and made me who I am today.
           

Before I begin to explain what happened, I want tell you guys that as a child, I wasn’t the brightest. It took me a long time to differentiate right from left. Eventually, I figured out what was right and what was left, but I never imagined the world that I was about to enter. Instead of right and left, it turned into right and wrong. That every idea, every word changed the way you think, live, and believe. And the sentence that changed me was said by one of my classmates in the 2nd grade,

“get over it, it’s not about you.”
Why did he say that, well it started about a month before that, when my grandfather passed away. For most kids, this is a sad occasion that could affect you for the next few weeks. But unfortunately for me, I wasn’t most kids because I lost my best friend, the man who instilled my beliefs into me for the first 6 years of my life. The man who taught me right from left, and that everything I should do, should be for you and everyone in my community. Also known as
You me community.

So after giving me everything I need, and setting me on a path to success he left. After he was gone and he died, you could imagine what I was feeling. And what did I feel, absolutely nothing. I didn’t feel any pain or anything, because as I said before I wasn’t a bright child. I thought that death was something temporary. I thought it would be a vacation to someplace called heaven. So after a few weeks, I decided to send a letter to heaven. I wrote the letter, but never sent it because I was scared that he would be mad at me because when he came back from his vacation I would be in different community helping different people, in fact I was moving all the way to some country called America.

So I went on the plane to America and was sad, nothing to serious. Until, I realized through a movie that death was forever. A movie. I was devastated, I couldn’t eat, drink, think, anything. I knew that my grandfather would want me to carry on helping everyone in my community, but I didn’t listen to him. I grieved and grieved over his death for over a year until I heard a kid say “get over it, it’s not about you”. When he said that, I first felt that he was a jerk. He was kicking me when I was down. It was as if I was lying on the ground because my leg hurt, and he came in and bashed me with a baseball bat over and over. Until, I realized that he was right, it wasn’t about me. It was about what my grandfather had told me about respecting my community and helping it. It was about the future and a pathway that he laid out for me to be successful.

When I realized that, I went home, found the letter, ripped it, and threw it in the trash. Because, that was the past, where I focused on me not anyone else, just me. Not the community, not you, not the person sitting next to you, it was about me. And when I got over that phase. I changed became a new person, and it all it took was for me to realize I had to help everyone else not myself.

You me community.

If everyone person believed in that one phrase, the future would be perfect And the only thing stopping you from perfection is yourself.