See Also:
Beginning of a FAMOUS Hero: The Ben Carson Story.
Life Lesson #79 – Grow Your Ideals.
Mr. Delaney looked out across his class one day and realized it was time to tell them his favorite story. Just by the way he cleared his throat, everyone knew a story was coming, and they all loved it. “Ladies and Gentlemen…” He always called his students Ladies and Gentlemen. “I want to tell you about a student I had several years ago; her name was Bailey Chandler, but everyone called her Bay.
Bay was kind of an average girl, she never really got into trouble, but she didn’t always do her best either. Then one day she had a chance to look into a magic mirror that showed what her life would be like when she was thirty-years-old!”
Now everyone knew that sometimes he exaggerated a little to make his point, and obviously the magic mirror was just made up, but Bay was real. “Bay’s life as an adult, according to the mirror, was not going to be a good one at all,” he said. “She wasn’t going to have a good job, she wasn’t going to make very much money, and people were not going to have much respect for her. She could not believe what she had seen in that mirror! But then she realized the mirror was showing her future—according to the path she was on at that time.”
Mr. Delaney continued to explain that Bay decided to start right then changing that path she had been on. She started thinking about her grades, and what it would take to make them better. She started listening in class instead of goofing off. She started thinking about her friends. Were they HELPING her to have a better future, or were they causing her to miss opportunities to learn and grow? Then Mr. Delaney said that Bay began to change the way she did things and even the way she thought about things. She even changed the kind of people she would call friends. Over time, he said, she became the person that she wanted the future Bay to be. She was a HERO to her own future self.
– Jim Lord