1a- Winning Choices - Genesis
“Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstances” - Bruce Barton
I remember it being a bitterly cold night that many years ago. The wind was slicing across my face like a razor blade and my cheeks were quickly numbing up. A driving icy rain had begun and I felt my wet pants freezing and sticking to my legs as I walked. It was very late at night and I knew I needed to select some shelter very soon. I’d been living in the streets on and off since I was fourteen, but now, for the first time in the six months since I turned sixteen and had been signed out of school by my father, it felt permanent. If it were warmer, I could be sleeping on my favorite bench in the park, but this nasty weather limited my options to the back seat of a car or a dimly lit hallway. I spied an apartment building lobby that looked right so I jimmied the door and hurried in. Immediately warmer and dryer, I curled up in the corner near the mailboxes and slipped into a guarded sleep. Soon, I was abruptly awakened by someone’s shoe tip, prodding and poking at my ribs and a loud, angry voice shouting, “get the hell up you stupid bum”! I leaped to my feet to avoid the kicking, still in a sleep haze. Humiliated and fearful, I backed towards the door to the street.
My antagonist stood at the top of the steps, flailing his arms in the dim light like an animated, angry shadow, continuing to shout, “get out of my hallway you dirty bum”! My sleepy mind began to clear and I felt anger replacing my embarrassment. I lifted my head and eyes, meeting his condemning gaze and cried, “don’t you call me a bum! You don’t know me. I’m no bum”!
Fearing the police were already on the way to arrest me as a vagrant and trespasser, I quickly turned and ran out to the street. Confused and hurt, I realized that that I didn’t really know who I was either, but I had enough self awareness to know who I wasn’t. I wasn’t that person sleeping in hallways, cars and on park benches, in dirty, wet clothes. I was more than that. This man couldn’t define who I was, only I could do that. I had more to offer and more to do. This much I knew.
Gerald George Ryan - Founder and President of “Winning Choices”
“…but if a man happens to find himself…he has a mansion which he can inhabit for the rest of his life”. – Dignity, James Michener