"Lost" in Massachusetts

So the journey came to end this evening. After much preparation, they sent us on the road before the young people of this world.  As warriors of the heart, we departed and many schools and several months later, I finished speaking at my last community event.  This final engagement took place in Weymouth, Massachusetts.

It was another beautiful day. Some divine force had postponed the onset of winter and gave us just a few more days of perfect fall in New England.  The students reflected this brim of hope.  Earlier that day, I watched them (one by one) touched, impacted, inspired, and excited.  I watched them walk with shoulders farther back, as they carried this new sense of purpose, awakening, beginning.  The message was simple: Kindness and Compassion, as seen through the eyes of 17 year old Rachel Scott.

The week hailed 4 very different schools for me as a presenter. I bounced from the low income notoriously tough neighborhoods of Randolph, to the well to do extremely focused staff and children of Norwell, to the middle class of Weymouth.  That evening (for the first time) I realized how fast time had gone by and how many had been affected over the course of these two months because of Rachels Challenge. I reflected on the kaleidoscope of faces, each with their own story and their own legacy to create.  I smiled that smile that men only have when they believe in their work.  Content that I believed in what we were doing as much as the kids whom we delivered it to, as much as the sheriff's department whom sponsored my last tour, as much as the teachers whom are moved by it, and as much as the future minds who are forever changed and often saved by it.

All this reflection came during my walk to the rental car in the cool fall evening. At the end of this walk, I was greeted with a shattered drivers window and shards of glass all over the interior.  The scene was a stark juxtaposition to the tranquility inside my mind. I peered into the vehicle and saw a moment of hope; the car adapter for the GPS was still lit and in place. My eyes trailed the dark dashboard of the car hoping to follow the end of that chord into the glove box where I usually hide my GPS. No such luck. It was gone. Nothing else was taken, just the GPS. To put it simply, I was disheartened. Especially after the presentation I just gave... It was disappointing.

I contacted the principal, who in turn, notified the police so that they could make a report. As I waited, fatigue set in and I thought about the significance of that item and what it truly (now more than ever) meant, as it rested in the hands of whoever took it. They were lost; and I wished that GPS could not only track directions from physical locations; but could help men and women find themselves, and more importantly find a path that led to love. I had never before tried typing in this address:

143 Love Avenue 

I wonder how many places would pop up? How many open arms would welcome a lost person? And how many times the GPS would say, “You have arrived at your destination”. I didn't know the answer. But I knew as the principal and myself stood outside, we resisted the ugly judgment that happens whenever something goes wrong: unfounded blame.

Earlier that evening there were a couple older kids who came in to the theatre for just a few minutes during the presentation. They were loud, disruptive. They sat talking over me for a couple minutes and then simply got up as if the theatre wasn't full and left loudly.  What the mind does in this moment, is everything ugly that we are standing against. The conclusions, the judgments, the associations, the stigmas, and the invisible label.  As one of the students so brilliantly put it during a training session we had, “It' not only a chain reaction for the better that we can create, but we also have to be careful to not let a chain reaction of negative things get passed on.” It's amazing how much we learn from them.

So as the principal and myself stood there in the dark watching the daring red and blue lights pull up, we knew we had to resist doing, what often subconsciously follows an experience like this,

“They probably took it because they were __________ (fill in the blank)”.

When we do that, we lose. We fail, and we perpetuate every notion that we are teaching these kids to stand against...

I take comfort in knowing that one good turn receives another and vice-versa. I make this, simply what all lessons must be, another experience, another thing to learn from, and another chance to show that invisible grain of integrity and character that we have to offer the world when no one is watching or knows any different.