This is be short but sweet! I wanted to share something that our Principal closed our faculty meeting with yesterday that I thought was very impactful.
The story goes: a young boy was called into the doctor’s office with his parents. The doctor explained to the little boy that his big sister was very sick and she would need an operation. The doctor and his parents wanted him to give his sister his blood… that she would need during the surgery.
The boy sat there with a look of deep concern on his face. Finally, he looked up and told them: “If it means saving my sister, then I’ll do it.” The next day, they rolled him into the waiting room beside his sister, inserted the needle in his arm and began to drain a pint of his blood. As he lay there, tears streamed down his face but the little boy persevered. A few minutes later, when the blood donation was over, his look changed to perplexity. The little boy called the doctor over to his bed and in a soft voice said to the doctor, “Doctor, when do I die?”
You see, the boy thought that he was sacrificing himself by giving his blood to save his sister’s life!
Then the other story Dr. Fowler shared concerned a man who walked up to a bus stop one day. There sitting on the bench was a woman whom he knew fairly well. She lived across the street from him with her 10 year old son. As he approached her on the bench, he gave his warmest smile and was getting ready to speak when she basically looked up at him, gave him a blank stare and looked down again.
“Welllllll.. the nerve of that woman. I always knew that she was a snob. Blowing me off like that. I never have really liked her that much. See if I ever help her out in her yard anymore.”
Just then the bus pulled up and as he started to get on the bus, she rose from the bench, looked up and recognizing him said: “Oh Lee, I’m so sorry. I was sitting here trying to compose myself. I just came from the doctor’s office where he told me that my son has leukemia.”
Guys… don’t think that you know how your players are feeling all the time or that you can JUDGE their intentions based on what you are observing at the moment. We just aren’t that wise. No matter how much experience you have working with teenagers (or adults)… you just don’t know what people are thinking.
What is the old saying: “Never assume anything. Cuz “assuming” just makes an A-S-S out of “U” and “ME.” Or as the Lord said in the Sermon on the Mount in the Book of Matthew: “Do not judge, or you too will be judged… Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your neighbor’s eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?”
Think about it!
