]]>"The lesson which life constantly repeats is to 'look under your feet.' You are always nearer to the divine and the true sources of your power than you think. The lure of the distant and the difficult is deceptive. The great opportunity is where you are. Do not despise your own place and hour. Every place is under the stars. Every place is the center of the world."
- John Burroughs
"Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterward."
- Chinese Proverb
"'The road,' wrote Cervantes, 'is always better than the inn.' Those who settle on fame or fortune, and having arrived, call it quits, miss the whole point of life. Realistically, there is no inn, no ultimate point of arrival. It is the road now and forever, finite man probing infinity, finding his way, endlessly. All that matters are the lessons learned along the way."
- Leonard E. Read
The tv segment starts off telling the story through the eyes of 2 teens who attend the school, both of whom had been sentenced to juvenile detention. The beginning of the report shows the neighborhood and the prison-like feeling of the school. What the report also shows is how the "Building Dreams" project (of which the mosaics I created with the kids was a part) also changed the minds of the teachers...
The teacher formerly the strongest opposed (and who was won over) attended Philip de Roo's presentation. We all had coffee afterwards - and I saw the gleam in the teacher's eye after listening to Philip, aged 23, tell about his polar expeditions. By the way, Philip and his team got back last week from crossing Greenland from south to north - the Notice Expediton. (That's 2500 km!) And he and his team did it in far less time than expected. I digress...
And the most difficult girl in my first mosaic session was shown telling what she wanted to have in her life. Read about that in the previous posts on Building Dreams.
So the message is clear:
Follow your heart and your dreams. Everything is possible - if only you believe it to be so!
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Image taken 2008 in South Africa by Armand Dijcks.
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Brit in South Africa 2008. Image by Armand Dijcks.
"Your living is determined not so much by what life brings to you as by the attitude you bring to life; not so much by what happens to you as by the way your mind
looks at what happens."
- Kahlil Gibran
Image taken by Armand Dijcks 2008 in South Africa.
Below, me at my wedding in traditional Norwegian costume, Maastricht, 2002. Compare my bridal bouquet with the above photo. Notice any similarities? (Photo by Axel Leversen).
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Image taken by Armand Dijcks 2008 in South Africa.
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