“There is more in us than we know. If we can be made to see it, perhaps, for the rest of our lives, we will be unwilling to settle for less.” Kurt Hahn, Founder of Outward Bound
A story: Sparky was a loner and a loser. As a kid, school was all but impossible for him to handle. In the eighth grade, he failed every subject he took. He flunked physics in high school with a zero. He also failed Latin, algebra and English. Sports weren’t much better. He managed to make a school team one season, but lost a key match.
He was awkward socially. At school, other kids didn’t really dislike him, but no one paid much attention to him. He was amazed if a classmate said hello. He never once asked a girl out on a date in high school — he was too afraid of being turned down.
A some point in school, Sparky accepted his fate. He made up his mind early in life that if things were meant to work out, they would. If not, he’d just accept it.
But one thing was important to Sparky — drawing. He was proud of his artwork. In his senior year of high school, he submitted some cartoons to the editors of the yearbook. They were rejected. After high school, he wrote a letter to Walt Disney Studios. He was sent the subject of a cartoon and asked to submit samples. He poured himself into the his drawings and submitted them. Finally, the reply came from Disney Studios. When he opened it, he found another rejection.
Sparky responded by writing his own sadsack story in cartoons. He captured his childhood self — a little boy loser and a chronic underachiever. He captured his feelings and his failings with heart and humor.
The cartoon character he created as his alter ego became famous worldwide. Sparky, the boy who failed miserably in school and was rejected over and over again was Charles Schulz. He created the “Peanuts” comic strip about a boy whose kite would never fly and who never succeeded in kicking a football — Charlie Brown.
As my friend and mentor Dr. Rob Gilbert says on his Success Hotline (973.743.4690), you can count the number of seeds in an apple, but you can’t count the number of apples in a seed. There’s stardust in all of us — let it shine! Write on.