All it takes is one person to make a difference

Last night I took my daughter to see The Lorax movie based on the book written by Dr. Seuss. We sat through the movie with the singing and dancing. Watching a premonition unfold of what life for all of us will become if we don’t stop wasting our natural resources.

We sat in the theatre and laughed at the story because they had to make it humorous for people to go to see it. But behind the humour was a very serious message. It only takes one person to make a difference. Because when the one person steps outside the box, others will follow. Sometimes we are like sheep. Herded to the well and then we all fall over the edge because we are so busy trying to be accepted. Have what everyone has. Live what is considered to be the high life. But a lot of us are dying on the inside. Searching for meaning. The light and in the case of the boy in the Lorax searching for a real tree.

Watching Dr. Seuss took me back to a time thirteen years ago when I decided I was going to quit the corporate world to take care of my son. I was thirty six years old. I knew my most important job I would ever do in my life was to give my son the gift of me as a mother helping him to develop in his formative years.

I didn’t know what I was going to do or how I was going to get by financially. But I decided to throw fate to the wind and be where I knew I needed to be. As time wore on and finances became tight, I applied for a job as a freelance writer for one of the local newspapers. And lo and behold two days later I got a very nervous call from the woman who was to be my new boss offering me the job and at the same time apologising profusely for how little they were going to pay me.

She did not know how she made my day by offering me the job.  I took the job without hesitation. It was my first real job in the writing world. I didn’t care if they paid me one penny. Not only was someone acknowledging me as a writer; she was willing to pay me to write. I was in seventh heaven.

My first assignment was to write about the Dr. Seuss Day at the Children’s Library. And I remember doing the research on Dr. Seuss and feeling every creative juice in my body coming to life as Dr. Seuss snuck into my psyche. Filling my mind, body and soul with possibility. My fingers typed across the page without me even knowing how I began because the magic in his writing became a part of me. Giving me the wings to become a writer through and through.

Here it is some thirteen years later and it was so poetic to go to see this movie with my daughter and to be reconnected with the man who changed my life through his writings. Writings he composed many years before. And how they are still making a difference in a lot of people’s lives even though he is dead and gone. Because he was being true to himself.

Dr. Seuss was showing us he cared and wanted each of us to care about each other, our environment and everyone we encounter because we each have a role to play in this journey called life. To quote him from the end of the Lorax movie, "Unless someone like you...cares a whole awful lot...nothing is going to get better...It's not."