Isn't it amazing how few of us ask ourselves the important question?

Several years ago I was invited to hear an important speaker address the student body of a small college in South Carolina. The auditorium was filled with students excited about the opportunity to hear a person of her stature speak. After the governor gave the introduction, the speaker moved to the microphone, looked at the audience from left to right, and began:

"I was born to a mother who was deaf and could not speak. I do not know who my father is or was. The first job I ever had was in a cotton field."

The audience was spellbound. "Nothing has to remain the way it is if that's not the way a person wants it to be," she continued. "It isn't luck, and it isn't circumstances, and it isn't being born a certain way that causes a person's future to become what it becomes." And she softly repeated, "Nothing has to remain the way it is if that's not the way a person wants it to be."

"All a person has to do," she added in a firm voice, "to change a situation that brings unhappiness or dissatisfaction is answer the question: "How do I want this situation to become?" Then the person must commit totally to personal actions that carry them there."

Then a beautiful smile shone forth as she said, "My name is Azie Taylor Morton. I stand before you today as treasurer of the United States of America."

by Bob Moore
from Chicken Soup for the Soul at Work
Copyright 1996 by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, Maida Rogerson, Martin Rutte & Tim Clauss